Happy New Year, nuke-watchers, and thanks for reading the year’s first issue of RadWaste Monitor.
As we settle back into things after the holidays, here’s a rundown of a few stories we’ll be tracking across the civilian nuclear power space in 2022.
A Second Private Interim Storage Site Inches Closer to Reality
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing review of Holtec International’s proposed consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for spent nuclear fuel should make some progress this year after several delays in 2021. NRC said in November that it wouldn’t be able to wrap up the licensing process in January as planned because Holtec hadn’t provided agency staff with enough information to complete a required safety review of the proposed Eddy County, N.M., site. So far, NRC has yet to update its timeline for completing the licensing process.
November was the second time NRC had to pump the brakes on Holtec’s licensing review — the commission previously delayed things in March, for similar reasons.
Although the proposed Holtec site has hit a couple of speed bumps, 2021 proved that a private company could indeed get a federal license to store spent nuclear fuel. Interim Storage Partners (ISP), an Orano-Waste Control Specialists (WCS) joint venture, in September got NRC’s blessing to build its own interim storage site in Andrews, Texas.
Whether federal law allows a commercial site to actually operate, however, is a different question.
State Lawsuits Over Commercial Interim Storage Heat Up
The two states slated to play host to the Holtec and ISP sites — New Mexico and Texas, respectively — are hoping that federal nuclear waste law will keep spent fuel out of their backyards.
Both states are suing NRC in federal court over the proposed sites, arguing that the agency is overstepping its legal bounds by licensing interim storage — a claim that should be tested before a judge as early as January. The U.S. District Court for New Mexico is slated Jan. 20 to hear debate on NRC’s motion to dismiss state Attorney General Hector Balderas’s lawsuit against the proposed Holtec site.
Balderas has argued that NRC can’t license an interim storage site under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), the 1987 law governing federal nuclear waste disposal. According to Balderas, since the NWPA prevents the feds from licensing an interim storage site before a permanent repository is open — and since the Yucca Mountain project is effectively dead — licensing either commercial CISF violates the law.
NRC and some experts have disagreed with that interpretation: the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), not the NWPA, governs NRC, the agency has argued. Even if the commission was subject to the NWPA, that law’s restrictions on interim storage only apply to federally-operated storage sites and not those owned by private companies, NRC has said.
Balderas has also filed suit in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging the proposed ISP site in Texas. That case is pending while a judge reviews a separate motion to dismiss from NRC.
Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has yet to provide more than a hint about how he will oppose ISP’s proposed site in his Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals lawsuit. Paxton said in a November filing that his team will argue that “by licensing a de facto permanent facility for spent nuclear fuel, the agency has exceeded its power.” It will likely be a little while before that case is fleshed out — the court has put proceedings on ice while it looks over another NRC motion to dismiss.
DOE Looking for Community Input on Federal Interim Storage
The Department of Energy last year set out to reboot the Barack Obama administration’s consent-based siting approach, framing the effort as a way to ensure the Joe Biden administration would succeed where Obama did not.
Responses to DOE’s request for information (RFI) on the new consent-based siting process for an interim storage facility are due March 4. DOE published the RFI in late November — to date, it’s the most action the Biden administration has taken on the issue of spent fuel storage.
The RFI focuses less on where a future interim storage site will be located, and more on how DOE will consider potential candidates. The request invites feedback across three main areas: the consent-based siting process, removing barriers to meaningful participation in the consent-based siting process and interim storage as part of a waste management system.
DOE is embarking on its inquiry fully aware that actually building a federal interim storage site would require an update to federal law, specifically the NWPA.
“While new legislation would be required to build an interim storage facility, there are a range of activities the DOE can pursue now,” the agency’s Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff told RadWaste Monitor during a press call in November. That includes DOE’s current inquiry as well as a move to identify a potential host site, Huff said.
“Further development, deployment and operation of that interim storage facility would be subject to the constraints [of the NWPA] that would need to be addressed,” Huff said.
Feds to Auction off Cash for Struggling Nuclear Plants
As part of Biden’s big infrastructure bill, the federal government stepped in to prop up economically-troubled nuclear plants with roughly $6 billion in tax credits greenlit as part of the trillion-dollar bipartisan spending package signed into law in November.
According to the bill, DOE has four months — until March — to set up the auction process.
Details have so far been scarce about how those credits will be funneled to plant operators. As for how such an auction would actually happen, agency deputy chief of staff Jeremiah Baumann told RadWaste Monitor during a press call Nov. 9 that it could be “a little while before we have the details of exactly how the process will work.” The timeline he set then was weeks or months.
A tax break for nuclear plants would be good news for the industry. 2021 saw Indian Point Energy Center in New York shut down for good. Illinois’s Byron and Dresden plants were nearly casualties in the fall but were saved by a late-game bailout from Springfield.
Palisades Nuke Plant to Shutter, Holtec to Decommission
As in years past, there will be more nuclear power plants reaching the end of their road than new plants starting up. Top among these, Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Plant is slated to shut down in the spring, its operator Entergy has said.
NRC late last year approved the Covert, Mich., plant’s sale to Holtec International, along with the transfer of the license for the already-decommissioned Big Rock Point in Charlevoix, Mich. Holtec will decommission Palisades and oversee spent fuel management at both plants.
Although NRC has greenlit the sale, several stakeholders including the Michigan government have requested a hearing on the transaction. Those requests, which could affect the terms of the sale if they are approved, are pending before the commission, NRC has said.
Meanwhile, Holtec plans to finalize things with Entergy in the next six months or so. The company has said it could wrap up the process by June.
If Holtec locks down ownership of Palisades and Big Rock Point, its decommissioning portfolio would grow to five sites. The company’s decommissioning services business, a joint venture with SNC-Lavalin, is already working at New York’s Indian Point plant, New Jersey’s Oyster Creek plant, and Massachusetts’s Pilgrim plant.
Companies Evaluate Former Reactor Sites as Hosts for Advanced Nuclear
As more and more nuclear plants are decommissioned and their sites cleared for other uses, some companies and experts are examining whether former reactor sites could be repurposed for new nuclear projects.
Holtec International is considering one of its current decommissioning projects, Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey, as a potential site for the company’s SMR-160 modular reactor. Holtec Vice President of Regulatory and Environmental Affairs Andrea Sterdis said Nov. 1 that the company was “evaluating” whether Oyster Creek would be a suitable site for an SMR-160.
Sterdis said that the Forked River, N.J. site could be ideal for an advanced reactor because it boasts existing power grid connections. Regulators in the area also already understand the permits and regulations needed to operate a nuclear plant, she said.
Despite that, Sterdis told RadWaste Monitor at the time that Holtec wasn’t in any position to comment on when their evaluation would be complete. “There’s a lot of work to do, and the assessments and evaluations and communications have to be gone through in a very diligent manner,” she said.
According to the Department of Energy, Holtec is one of the only advanced reactor manufacturers planning its demonstration project at a decommissioned nuclear plant site.
Experts are also looking for ways to repurpose existing nuclear plants to keep their doors open.
A November report from a Stanford University-Massachusetts Institute of Technology research team found that California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant could be used as a “polygeneration facility” if it was kept running, producing electricity, clean hydrogen and desalinated water. Diablo Canyon’s operator Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) plans to shutter the San Luis Obispo County, Calif., plant’s two reactors between 2024 and 2025.
Diablo Canyon is the last operating nuclear plant in the Golden State.
