Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has offered initial support for licensing a facility in West Texas for temporary storage of thousands of tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
The recommendation is included in a draft version of the environmental impact statement for Interim Storage Partners’ planned consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) in Andrews County. The document was posted to the NRC website Monday.
“The NRC staff preliminarily recommend that, unless safety issues mandate otherwise, the proposed license be issued to ISP to construct and operate a CISF at the proposed location to temporarily store up to 5,000 [metric tons] of SNF for a licensing period of 40 years,” according to the draft.
Agency staff used similar language in preliminarily recommending license approval, in a March draft environmental impact statement, for a larger used-fuel facility planned by energy technology firm Holtec International in southeastern New Mexico.
Interim Storage Partners (ISP) is a joint venture of Orano USA and Waste Control Specialists. Its facility would be built on the Waste Control Specialists disposal complex, along the Texas border with New Mexico.
While the initial license would cover above-ground storage of 5,000 metric tons of radioactive waste for four decades, the operation could be expanded to storage of up to 40,000 metric tons of used fuel and Greater-Than-Class C waste for 120 years. Staff at the NRC said it considered the planned expansion, “where appropriate,” in evaluating the facility’s environmental effects.
The regulator expects to complete the environmental impact statement a year from now, following a 120-day public comment period. It is also preparing a separate safety analysis for the license application, which Interim Storage Partners said in a brief statement Monday is expected in the second quarter of 2021. The decision on the license application would be made shortly after completion of those documents.
“Certainly, we are satisfied with the NRC’s process and their findings and will continue to work to meet the high expectations of the regulators and our community partners,” Interim Storage Partners said Thursday.
A timeline on the Interim Storage Partners website suggests the company expects to begin building the initially licensed segment of the storage facility in 2022 and to start accepting material in 2023. Asked about the schedule, the company said by email “We are solely focused on the licensing and regulatory process.”
The used fuel would be held in dry-storage systems manufactured by Orano and project partner NAC International, a used fuel management specialist based in Georgia.
The new draft environmental impact statement largely adheres to the template the NRC used in assessing the Holtec project. It evaluates impacts from construction, operations, and decommissioning in a broad swath of environmental areas. Potential impacts are rated as small, moderate, or large for the proposed licensing for 5,000 metric tons, for full site buildout to 40,000 metric tons, and for simply not building the facility.
Staff came to the same conclusions for the first phase and for full buildout. Specifically, they would have small impacts on land use, transportation, geology and soils, surface water, groundwater, air quality, noise, visual and scenic, public and occupational health, and waste management. The no-action option would have no impact because the facility would not be built.
The ecological impact for all three phases of the operation would be small for wildlife and moderate for vegetation, the report says.
The effect on historic and cultural properties is anticipated to be small, pending a report required under the National Historic Preservation Act.
Under socioeconomics for the first phase and full buildout, the project is expected to have small to moderate impacts in areas including employment, housing, public services, and local finance.
No exact ranking is given for the environmental justice category. The report instead says: No disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects.”
This is the latest regulatory step in a process dating to April 2016, when Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists on its own filed the license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The financially struggling company was looking for another revenue source for its waste complex, which houses of one four licensed commercial facilities for disposal of low-level radioactive waste. At the time it was also in the midst of a buyout by rival EnergySolutions, a deal contested by the Department of Justice.
Waste Control Specialists asked the NRC to suspend its license review in April 2017, just over two months before a federal court blocked the merger. The company was eventually bought by private equity firm J.F. Lehman, and then teamed on the storage project with the U.S. branch of French nuclear company Orano. The venture submitted a revised license application in June 2018.
The Interim Storage Partners and Holtec facilities could be one means of addressing a longstanding dilemma in the United States – what to do with the radioactive spent fuel that is accumulating at nuclear power plants around the country. There is now over 80,000 metric tons of the waste, and the stockpile grows by about 2,000 metric tons each year.
In the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Congress gave the Department of Energy until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin removing used fuel from the sites of generation. That has yet to happen, and the Energy Department’s on-and-off attempts to license a permanent repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada are off again.
Consolidated interim storage facilities, theoretically, could hold the spent fuel until a repository is ready.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has appeared ambivalent about the Interim Storage Partners facility, though he has not indicated direct opposition. His office did not respond to queries this week.
A number of environmental and other advocacy organizations have warned of the hazards posed by both used-fuel storage projects, including the potential for the accidental release of radioactive material during transport or storage. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has also opposed the Holtec facility.
The Sierra Club, Beyond Nuclear, and other groups petitioned the NRC to formally intervene in the Interim Storage Partners licensing proceeding, which would enable them to raise contentions in hearings. Most of the same groups also sought hearings in the Holtec licensing.
They have had little luck in either. An NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected all petitions for the Interim Storage Partners licensing. Appeals have been filed to the full commission by the Sierra Club, Beyond Nuclear, a coalition of organizations led by Don’t Waste Michigan, and the regional oil and gas concerns Fasken Land and Minerals and the Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners. The commission has not yet ruled on the appeals.
The four commissioners, though, in April rejected most of the appeals of an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruling against the hearing requests in the Holtec proceeding.
