The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday rejected a request from several environmental and anti-nuclear groups for a hearing to oppose an application for a license to export up to 10,000 metric tons of radioactively contaminated material from Tennessee to Canada.
Massachusetts-based UniTech Services Group in 2016 requested authorization to ship the material back customers across the border after it has been decontaminated at the company’s Oak Ridge, Tenn., Service Center. The license would cover “byproduct material in the form of radioactively contaminated solids, metallic oxides, and other chemical forms,” according to Thursday’s NRC memorandum and order.
Staff at the NRC previously determined the nuclear services company does not need a license to import the material, saying the operation is already covered by a general license.
The truck transports have caught the attention of a number of nongovernmental groups, and some U.S. lawmakers, who worry about shipping radioactive material over long stretches of U.S. highways.
The Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Beyond Nuclear, the Nuclear Energy Information Service, Tennessee Environmental Council, and Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination petitioned to intervene in the application with an adjudicatory hearing in front of the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. They also asserted the regulator had breached its own rules by failing to mandate that UniTech obtain the import license.
The groups said their members’ interests could be impacted by the truck transports, such as by “chance highway encounters” with the vehicles or potential leaks or accidents that would have harm the environment. But the commission ruled that the petitioning organizations had not shown that the level of impact to those interests met the threshold required for a hearing. They also failed to demonstrate that a hearing would be in the public good and help the commission in its decision-making, according to the order: “As we recently explained, to satisfy these factors, a petitioner must show how a hearing would bring new information to light.”
The commission noted that federal regulations allow a general import license for “byproduct, source, or special nuclear material if the U.S. consignee is authorized to receive and possess the material under the relevant NRC or Agreement State regulations.” That covers UniTech, and the two exceptions to the rule do not apply in this situation, the NRC said.
Having denied the request for a hearing, the commisison directed NRC staff to “expeditiously address” the license application.
Terry Lodge, an attorney representing Beyond Nuclear and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said Friday the petitioners are considering whether to appeal the decision. “There are serious implications to the NRC’s fomentation of a nearly-invisible, dangerous waste stream as a normalized activity,” he wrote in an email.
