Waste Control Specialists announced Friday that it is on schedule to submit its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a consolidated interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility in West Texas.
As of March the company had planned to submit the application by May 1. In an announcement Friday, WCS President and CEO Rod Baltzer said: “We said a year ago that we would submit this application in the spring of 2016, and be in position to be accepting waste by 2021. It was an ambitious timeline, but I’m pleased to report that we are still on schedule. I expect to submit the license application very soon.”
WCS is one of two companies planning to submit an application, the other being Holtec International, which plans to build and operate an interim storage site in New Mexico. The Department of Energy has laid out a three-phase consent-based siting process for American nuclear waste that includes a pilot storage facility, interim facilities, and eventually one or more permanent repositories.
WCS is applying for an initial 40-year license that would allow a storage system to with a capacity of 40,000 metric tons to be built in eight phases. Combined, the WCS and Holtec sites could house the estimated 74,000 metric tons of spent fuel that has accumulated at American nuclear sites as a result of DOE’s failure to yet meet its obligation under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to provide permanent storage for the material.
