Orano and Waste Control Specialists (WCS) are just weeks from formalizing their partnership to license, build, and operate a facility for centralized interim storage of spent nuclear reactor fuel, new WCS CEO Scott State said this week.
The joint venture, announced last week, will be called Interim Storage Partners. Its first job will be to formally request the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission resume its technical review of the license application Waste Control Specialists filed in April 2016. The timing will depend on corporate approval for the partnership from Orano (formerly AREVA) and private equity firm J.F. Lehman, which bought Waste Control Specialists in January.
“I believe Orano’s got this in front of executive committee in the next week or two, and so we’re formalizing and finalizing the joint venture documentation,” State, who became WCS chief executive and chief nuclear officer after the buyout, told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing on the sidelines of the Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix, Ariz. “Upon all of that getting done we would expect to get the process moving forward again on the licensing.”
Lehman has already signed off on the agreement, State said.
Waste Control Specialists plans an addition to its waste disposal complex in Andrews County, Texas: an independent spent fuel storage installation with maximum capacity for 40,000 metric tons of used fuel now held at nuclear plants around the country. The NRC halted its license review in April 2017, at the company’s request ahead of its-then pending acquisition by low-level radioactive waste disposal rival EnergySolutions. A federal judge blocked the deal last June on antitrust grounds, but Lehman swooped in just a few months later.
State said Lehman’s interest was driven by nuclear decommissioning specialist NorthStar Group Services. Lehman in 2017 became controlling shareholder in NorthStar, where State also serves as CEO.
“It was always of interest just from the NorthStar perspective as the back-end piece of our overall decommissioning business,” he said. “We wanted cost certainty associated with our decommissioning projects, and having disposal capacity in a committed way with our shareholder just made sense.”
