Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/12/2015
As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission makes plans to reorganize the agency under the direction of Project Aim 2020, industry officials and NRC Staff predicted this week that the effort could end up growing divisions within the NRC dealing with waste issues. The Commission directed staff this week to begin making action plans drawing from many of the recommendations of the Project AIM report, which include a move away from new reactor licensing and a re-baselining of anticipated future work.
Many at the NRC’s Fuel Cycle Information Exchange (FCIX) predicated that waste divisions will either stay at current levels or see increases in staff numbers, mainly due to the steady increase of Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSI) installations and manufacturing as a result of the Department of Energy’s failure to remove high-level nuclear waste. “By 2020, almost every U.S. nuclear power plant will have dry storage on site,” said keynote speaker Eileen Supko, a principal with Energy Resources International. “We will also see a number of shutdown sites move their spent fuel from wet pools to dry cask storage by 2020. A number of sites have laid out plans that they expect to be completed by that time.” She predicted, “As such, you can expect the NRC and part 72 licensees will continue to seek amendments to and request for approval of part 72 and part 71 certificates of compliance for the movement and storage of spent nuclear fuel, likely at a similar rate the NRC has seen in recent years, which has been very active.”
The other area within the waste division that could see NRC growth is the renewal of ISFSI related licenses, Supko said. “Another licensing action growth area in the spent fuel storage area is the renewal of site specific ISFSI’s as well as COC’s for dry storage,” Supko said. “These activities will take significant effort for both from the COC owners, the ISFSI operators, and the NRC. My understanding is that there will be six ISFSIs in the process of renewal from now until 2020, and 7 cask designs.”
These numbers do not include the two companies—and possibly more in the future—seeking to host an interim consolidated spent fuel storage facility. Waste Control Specialists in West Texas and the Eddy Lea Energy Alliance in Southeast New Mexico both plan on submitting applications for interim facilities within the next two to three years, and according to some officials, those applications will go through about a four year review process. According to NRC’s Catherine Haney, Director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, the NRC will try to stay “nimble” in response to these types of applications. “With regards to interim consolidated spent fuel storage, we are watching closely what is going on out on the Hill in terms of that, as well as what is going on in the industry,” she said. “We are doing what we have said for the past couples years in that the NRC is trying to be in a position to best respond to whatever decision comes out of the Administration to dispose of nuclear waste in the future.”
Commission Issues Project Aim SRM
While stakeholders tried to predict how Project Aim would affect the NRC’s waste divisions, the Commission issued a Staff Requirements Memorandum this week that directed Staff to begin implementing many of the recommendations outlined in the report. “I am pleased that the NRC is now moving forward with a set of sound, common-sense steps. The time has come for the agency to take stock of itself,” NRC Chairman Stephen Burns said in a statement. “The measures the agency will be implementing through Project AIM will better prepare us to meet the challenges of 2020 and beyond, while ensuring we have the right staff in the right places to accomplish our critical mission.”
According to the NRC, the SRM directed Staff to review the agency workload and develop a list of tasks that could be shed as no longer needed or justified, or able to be performed at a reduced level. The Commission also approved a staffing target of 3,600 employees by Sept. 30, 2016, compare to the current 3,778 in Fiscal Year 2015, but it deferred setting a 2020 target until after the re-baselining review is completed.
The Commission issued the Project Aim report as an effort to right-size the agency to better address the anticipated future workload. The Commission has come under fire recently from Republicans within both chambers for the size and efficiency of the Staff, especially in light of a reduction in new reactor builds across the country.
