A venture capitalist studying options for spent nuclear fuel storage and reprocessing in South Carolina said Wednesday his group will not pursue an interim storage license with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, instead shifting focus to new reactor design and reprocessing.
Mike Stake, head of the Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Group, originally told the NRC in July 2016 that the organization planned to apply for an operating license for an interim spent fuel storage facility, with the capability of reprocessing spent fuel from the state’s nuclear reactors at a facility planned near the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in Aiken.
Stake in an interview Wednesday said there is simply not enough demand for the concept in South Carolina. Stake’s plans drew criticism from environmental groups last fall, when Weapons Complex Monitor reported details of the concept, while South Carolina utilities showed little interest in shipping their waste to the planned facility.
“It was more of an economic drive – is really what our shift (in focus) was,” Stake said in a phone interview. “If you don’t pay attention to the economic drive, you’re not going to have a product that’s going to be saleable. So it was mainly economics. We’re going to have pushback everywhere we go and whatever we do, but if we can’t have it economically viable, you’ve got nothing.”
Stake said his group is pursuing a reactor design similar to that of Transatomic Power, which has developed a molten salt reactor design for nuclear plants to supplant the traditional light-water reactor design. The company claims the new design produces less than half the waste of the light-water reactor.
