The Nuclear Regulatory Commission won’t reconsider a minerals company’s objections to the licensing of Interim Storage Partners’ proposed consolidated interim storage site in West Texas, according to a recent agency filing.
According to Friday’s filing, the commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board threw out the most recent of three motions filed last year by Fasken Land & Minerals, Ltd., which would have raised new objections to the NRC’s licensing process for the proposed storage site and amended older ones the commission tossed in 2019.
This most recent development finishes off the last of the holdings company’s petitions from last year.
Fasken and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners filed two motions in January and February 2020, seeking to overturn NRC’s 2019 rejections of the group’s objections to Interim Storage Partners’ proposed storage facility in Andrews, Texas. A third motion, filed in July, sought to re-open the record so the company could lodge a new objection to the licensing process. But NRC doubled down and tossed the first two motions in December. The commission referred the third motion to the board, which took only a little longer to deny it, too.
The commission determined that Fasken’s July objection did not provide a convincing argument to re-open the record, Friday’s filing said. Such an action would be “extraordinary,” the commission said, and added that the agency “places an intentionally heavy burden” of evidence on petitioners like Fasken.
Meanwhile, Fasken filed no new objections in their contestation of another proposed interim storage facility, the Holtec International site in southeastern New Mexico, even after a deadline extension was granted at the company’s request, the commission said.
Scott Burnell, an NRC spokesman, told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in an email Monday that no new filings were sent to the agency before the extended deadline had passed.
Fasken filed a petition Thursday asking the commission for extra time to read through the more than 1,000 pages of licensing documents made available for the proposed Holtec consolidated interim storage facility in New Mexico. The agency approved the request in a memo last week.
Interested parties usually have 30 days following the release of licensing documents to formally lodge objections with the commission. The two groups said they sought the seven-day grace period because the COVID-19 pandemic and the holiday season amounted to “extenuating circumstances” that prevented them from adequately reviewing the Holtec licensing documents.
The licensing of both the Texas and New Mexico interim storage sites is one of the biggest issues facing the Biden administration. The commission is working on environmental impact statements for these proposed facilities, but neither will be finished for months.
