SAVANNAH, Ga. – Waste Control Specialists and Orano USA plan within the next two months to formally request that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission resume its review of a stalled license application for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel in West Texas, according to the executive leading their partnership.
The companies expect in the second quarter to complete the agreement formalizing their new joint venture, Interim Storage Partners, and then to submit a revised license application to the NRC, said Jeff Isakson, an Orano vice president who is now CEO of Interim Storage Partners. The second quarter ends on June 30.
If approved and built, the facility could be part of the solution to the Department of Energy’s congressional mandate to dispose of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power reactors. The agency was supposed to begin the process by Jan. 31, 1998, but still doesn’t have anywhere to put what is now more than 75,000 metric tons of radioactive waste. Interim sites could hold the spent fuel, possibly for decades, until a permanent repository is ready.
Orano, then called AREVA, was already part of the Waste Control Specialists project as a supplier of spent fuel storage and transport capabilities. That has not changed now that it has become an equal partner in reviving the application, Isakson told RadWaste Monitor on the sidelines of the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Used Fuel Management Conference here.
Dallas-based WCS in April 2016 filed the application for a 40-year license for storage of up to 5,000 metric tons of spent fuel at its waste disposal complex in Andrews County, Texas. The facility’s maximum capacity is envisioned at 40,000 metric tons.
Shortly after the regulator moved into its full technical review of the application, the company in April 2017 put it on hold while it awaited the outcome of its contested buyout by Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions. The U.S. Justice Department had sued against the merger on antitrust grounds, and a federal judge blocked the deal last June. Waste Control Specialists was instead bought in January by private equity firm J.F. Lehman.
The joint venture with Orano was announced in March. “It made sense to make a strong team,” Isakson said.
Waste Control Specialists had suffered tens of millions of dollars in losses in recent years, though its financial situation appeared to have strengthened ahead of the sale. In asking the NRC to suspend the license application proceeding, it cited the roughly $7 million cost of the effort. Isakson acknowledged that Orano will share in the costs to help stabilize the project, though he declined to discuss details.
NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki last week said reviews of both proposed interim spent fuel storage facilities – the anticipated WCS-Orano project and a site planned by Holtec International in New Mexico – would take about three years.
The NRC is ready, upon request, to quickly resume its review of the license application for the Texas facility, Michael Layton, director of the NRC’s Division of Spent Fuel Management, said during a panel discussion at the conference.
“We did a very orderly closeout of that review,” he said. “We’re in a place right now that if, which I understand that Waste Control Specialists would like to come back and ask us to start the review again, we’ll be able to begin that review within a very short period of time.”
Interim Storage Partners’ schedule to build and operate its facility would be based first on an updated NRC schedule for its license application review, Isakson said.
New Jersey-based energy technology company Holtec submitted its license application in March 2017, covering 8,680 metric tons of capacity that could eventually grow to over 100,000 metric tons. The NRC in February began the technical review of the Holtec application, and the company expects by summer to complete its responses to the agency’s first request for additional information, said Evrim Kalfazade, Holtec program manager for corporate business development. If everything goes right, the NRC review would wrap up in 2020. With its license, Holtec would move quickly to construction and be ready to take spent fuel shipments by 2023, Kalfazade said at the conference.
The NRC is in the scoping stage of developing its environmental impact statement for the Holtec license, with meetings held this week in three southeastern New Mexico cities. While Gov. Susana Martinez and other state leaders have supported the project, locals this week expressed concerns that alternatives to a new nuclear site in their area – already home to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and URENCO’s uranium enrichment plant – were not being considered, according to local news coverage.
The area’s experience with such facilities “doesn’t mean that everybody’s welcoming us with open arms,” Kalfazade acknowledged.
The Waste Control Specialists application had already cleared its environmental scoping period when it was suspended last year. The only real update to the license will be replacing the company’s name with Interim Storage Partners, according to Isakson.
The NRC decision-making timeline could be extended if outside groups petition to intervene and request hearings on the applications. The Sierra Club has already indicated its intention to intervene in the Holtec case.
