Waste Control Specialists on Wednesday clarified capacity details concerning its application to operate a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Andrews County, Texas, following a Nuclear Regulatory Commission determination that the application is incomplete.
The commission in a June 22 letter said the company’s 3,000-page application, filed in April, lacked the technical information necessary for NRC staff to conduct its full review. WCS has committed to providing all responses by October.
With Wednesday’s filing, the company has responded to 52 percent of NRC’s request for supplemental information (RSI). WCS CEO and President Rod Baltzer detailed the storage aspect in a blog post Wednesday, saying the company has been asked why it maintains the license application is for 40,000 metric tons of uranium (MTU) when it only analyzed 5,000 MTU of spent nuclear fuel from 12 closed or decommissioned nuclear reactors around the U.S.
“The 40,000 MTU is the entire size of our facility and will be used to prepare the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA),” Baltzer wrote. “The 5,000 MTU is the size of Phase 1 of the facility and is addressed in the Safety Analysis Report (SAR). In the license application, WCS is requesting authorization for up to 5,000 MTU in dry cask storage systems that currently have Safety Analysis Report revisions and amendments that have already been approved by the NRC. This was something that NRC asked we clarify, so we will be revising License Conditions and Technical Specifications as necessary to ensure such restrictions apply.”
The company hopes by 2021 to begin operations at the facility, which would be a new component to its West Texas waste storage complex.
With this week’s filing, WCS says it has now responded to 54 items in the RSI. The company is scheduled to respond to 31 more items on Aug. 31, eight on Sep. 30, and to wrap up with 11 on Oct. 31, as detailed in a WCS letter to Mark Lombard, director of the NRC’s Division of Spent Fuel Management.
NRC spokeswoman Maureen Conley said via email Wednesday that the WCS filing is the first batch of responses to the agency’s RSIs on the application. The batch included responses to two RSIs concerning the application’s environmental report, Conley wrote.
“We hope that clarifying key aspects of the application and improving our communications to the public will be two significant steps that will help reassure the public and get us a step closer to making interim storage a reality,” Baltzer wrote.
WCS is one of two companies pursuing an NRC license for consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel. Holtec International is expected to file a license application by November for a 70,000-metric-ton capacity facility in New Mexico.
