Staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission aims by the end of February to decide whether to move forward with a full technical review of Holtec International’s license application for a consolidated interim spent fuel storage facility in southeastern New Mexico.
The regulator has been conducting its acceptance review since the New Jersey energy technology company filed the license application in March 2017. That included NRC requests for supplemental information, which Holtec responded to in October and December of last year.
In two public events over the last week, senior NRC officials said a staff decision on docketing the application is expected in early 2018. An agency spokesman confirmed Wednesday the end-of-February timeline.
Holtec plans to build a facility for underground storage of up to 120,000 metric tons of spent fuel assemblies from commercial nuclear reactors. The Energy Department could use interim storage to meet its legal requirement to remove what is already more than 75,000 metric tons of the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants across the United States.
The full technical review, covering safety and environmental issues, would be expected to take three years.
The NRC was conducting a technical review of another proposed storage site in West Texas, but suspended work last year at the request of the developer, Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists. It remains to be seen if the company will resume its license application, according to agency officials.
