The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is again seeking more information from the Department of Energy as it weighs whether to renew the license for storage of radioactive waste from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant at the Idaho National Laboratory.
In March 2017, DOE applied for a 20-year renewal of the license for the independent spent fuel storage installation for Three Mile Island reactor Unit 2, pushing back the expiration date from March 2019 to March 2039. The regulator last fall requested more information in its environmental review of the application.
On Jan. 29, the agency issued a request for additional information for the staff technical review of the application. The request encompasses 22 separate items in four topic areas: scoping evaluation, aging management review, aging management programs, and time-limited aging analyses.
“We request that you provide this information by September 30, 2018. Inform us at your earliest convenience, but no later than September 16, 2018, if you are not able to provide the information by that date,” Kristina Banovac, project manager for the Renewals and Materials Branch of the NRC’s Spent Fuel Management Division, wrote in the Jan. 29 letter to DOE Idaho Cleanup Project Deputy Manager Jack Zimmerman.
The letter was posted Tuesday to the NRC website.
The regulator had previously anticipated ruling on the license extension by May of this year. A new timeline was not immediately available.
The Energy Department has said the license renewal would not lead to import of additional Three Mile Island waste to Idaho or expansion of the storage pad, which contains 341 canisters of spent nuclear fuel core debris left by the partial meltdown of the Pennsylvania reactor in March 1979.
Under an agreement with the state of Idaho, DOE has committed to relocate the waste by Jan. 1, 2035.
