The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week denied the latest, and last, request to extend the comment period on the scope of its environmental impact statement for a proposed spent nuclear fuel storage site in southeastern New Mexico.
Monday was the agency’s deadline for public input on this aspect of the broader technical review of the license application from Holtec International. The end date had already been pushed back from late May, but parties in New Mexico and around the country wanted even more time.
“Today remains the deadline for Holtec,” NRC spokesman David McIntyre said by email Monday. “Staff will assess the comments and draw up a scoping report to inform the draft EIS.”
The NRC is expected to rule by 2020 on Holtec’s March 2017 license application, which covers storage of 8,680 metric tons of radioactive waste on a 1,040-acre plot in Lea County, N.M., between the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad. With subsequent approvals from the agency, the site could ultimately hold more than 100,000 metric tons of waste.
The facility, along with a separate interim storage site proposed for West Texas, could enable the Department of Energy to finally meet its congressional mandate to remove tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power reactors. The waste would remain at the facilities until a permanent repository is ready.
On July 19, nearly 40 environmental and antinuclear groups requested the environmental scoping comment period be extended to Oct. 30 so they could digest the anticipated response from the NRC to a Freedom of Information Act request for 144 pages of a Holtec environmental document that was previously redacted upon release to the public. The organizations also wanted the NRC to suspend the 60-day window for groups to request intervention and hearings on the application.
“Today is the current deadline, without extension, and we’ve advised those associated with opposition to Holtec to treat today as the deadline,” Terry Lodge, an attorney representing the organization Don’t Waste Michigan, which filed the FOIA request, said by email Monday. “That means there will be quite a volume of comments filed, which the Commission is likely to use against considering any further extension.”
More than 2,000 comments have been filed to date. However, the majority of those are identical statements signed by different individuals against the Holtec project, McIntyre noted. Broadly, opponents worry about the danger of transporting dangerous radioactive waste through the country to New Mexico, where it would remain in storage for decades. Albuquerque and other municipalities around the state have voiced opposition to the project, but there is support in the governor’s office and in localities that stand to benefit economically near the planned Holtec site.
Don’t Waste Michigan and its partner organizations had previously asked for a 180-day extension to the comment period, plus 18 more public hearings in communities around the country that could be impacted by transport of spent fuel to New Mexico. A group of New Mexico lawmakers in February also requested that the NRC lengthen the comment period into 2019, when the state legislature would be back in session.
In denying the requests, the NRC has emphasized the need to move forward with its review and noted there will be other opportunities for public input as the proceeding advances.
Holtec, an energy technology company based in Camden. N.J., argued strenuously against the latest requested delay in the review.
“The HI-STORE CIS submittal has been publicly available for the past 16 months. We can’t identify any of the signers of the July 19, 2018 letter who attended the hearings in person,” Holtec President and CEO Krishna Singh wrote in a July 30 letter to NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki. “The fact that this group has waited until 11 days before the expiration date of the public comment period to petition a three-month delay reveals their true intent, which is to use as many legal stratagems as possible to slow down the progress of our project.”
Singh also took aim at individuals who spoke against the proposed facility during a round of public meetings this spring around New Mexico. “We have not heard any credible assertion from the intervenors that could be termed a rational or even quasi-scientific claim,” he wrote. “We believe that NRC officials who have participated in the public meetings would agree with us that the intervenor representatives have provided passionate discord wholly devoid of any technically based claim.”
The NRC expects to issue its draft environmental impact statement by next summer, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported, opening another window for public input ahead of the document’s completion a year afterward. The document, per the agency, will address potential impacts on air quality, surface and ground water, transportation, geology and soils, and socioeconomics, along with historic and cultural resources and endangered species.
