Waste Control Specialists expects by October to fully respond to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission request for supplemental information regarding the company’s license application to build and operate a consolidated interim spent fuel storage site in West Texas, WCS President and CEO Rod Baltzer said on Tuesday.
The commission in a June 22 letter said the company’s 3,000-page application did not have sufficient technical information for NRC staff to conduct a full review of the document. The agency gave WCS 28 days from the date of the letter to provide the information, and two weeks from the same point to inform the NRC whether it can provide the information in that time period.
In a blog post, Baltzer said Waste Control Specialists last week submitted a schedule for providing its responses to the NRC. The main data delivery is expected on July 20, he said.
“However, as the NRC is aware, some of the answers will require further discussions with them and those will likely be completed by the end of September,” Baltzer added. “Likewise, one request requires us to conduct an analyses that will take us through October.”
While Baltzer did not discuss specifics for what information would be provided at which times, a July 6 WCS letter to the NRC listed four dates for its response: July 20, Aug. 31, Sept. 30, and Oct. 31. The company cited indicated it would provide information in four areas: Safety Analysis Report Non-Proprietary; Environmental Report; Safety Analysis Report Proprietary; and Physical Security Plan. The Environmental Report data would be provided in whole on July 20, while the other data would be spread out across multiple dates.
“WCS will be keeping NRC advised of our progress and will provide written notification to the NRC should the scheduled dates for completing any of the RSIs require adjusting,” Scott Kirk, WCS vice president of licensing and regulatory affairs, said in the letter to Mark Lombard, director of the NRC’s Division of Spent Fuel Management.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Maureen Conley said Wednesday that agency staff is “amenable to WCS’s proposal to provide responses in phases, as long as the responses are of high quality. We have communicated this to WCS, together with the need for them to respond promptly.”
The NRC information request addressed three broad areas, with each featuring numerous subsections where more information was needed: the licensing basis for the dry casks that would store the fuel; indications that the application features “future certificate of compliance (CoC) amendments” the NRC has not reviewed or approved, rather than being restricted to already-approved storage casks; and the need for more detail in some sections of the application.
“We are eager to be as timely in our responses as they were in taking the first pass at our application. It is evident that it is being considered very seriously and that’s very encouraging,” Baltzer said. He indicated the NRC would likely request additional detail regarding the application.
The NRC has a standard review process for all license applications, Conley said. That begins with the acceptance review and request for supplemental information, now underway for the WCS application. An application that is accepted for review generally undergoes two requests for additional information (RAI). “These RAIs are often lengthy, highly technical questions aimed at specific information needed for us to make a regulatory finding,” Conley said by email. “In some cases, a single set of RAIs is sufficient but very often there are two rounds of RAIs and sometimes more.”
The full NRC review for Waste Control Specialists’ 40-year license could take three years. The company hopes by 2021 to begin operating the facility designed to hold up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel now stored at commercial reactor sites around the country.
Holtec International is also expected by November to file a license application with the NRC for an even larger spent fuel storage facility in New Mexico.
Both sites would contribute to the Department of Energy’s consent-based storage plan for spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste, which calls for establishing consolidated interim sites by 2025 and one or more permanent repositories by 2048.