The advocacy group Beyond Nuclear has asked a federal appeals court to order the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to revisit its 2018 decision against dismissing two licensing proceedings for facilities for interim storage of spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
The agency erred in kicking the legal question raised by Beyond Nuclear to a quasi-judicial NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that is reviewing petitions for intervention in both license proceedings, according to the Takoma Park, Md., group’s Dec. 27 motion before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “Accordingly, Petitioner respectfully requests this Court review, reverse, and vacate the Commission’s Order to deny Petitioner’s Motion to Dismiss, order the Commission to review Petitioner’s claim that the Applications violate the [Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Administrative Procedure Act], and grant any other remedies that may be appropriate.”
The NRC and one of the license applicants, Holtec International of New Jersey, affirmed their opposition to Beyond Nuclear’s position in separate filings this month. “Beyond Nuclear will be afforded the opportunity to raise the merits of its legal challenges to the license applications before the Board and, if it is dissatisfied with the result, before the Commission,” lawyers for the agency wrote in a Jan. 7 response.
At issue are ongoing NRC technical reviews of two applications for 40-year licenses to build and operate consolidated interim storage facilities: Holtec’s planned site in southeastern New Mexico, with capacity for up to 173,000 metric tons of spent fuel; and an Orano-Waste Control Specialists facility in West Texas with a maximum 40,000 metric tons of capacity.
In its July 2018 petition, Beyond Nuclear said both proceedings should be dismissed, primarily because they violate the legal requirement that the federal government take title to spent fuel from nuclear power licensees only when a disposal repository is operational. In an October response to the Beyond Nuclear petition, Secretary of the Commission Annette Vietti-Cook said the issue should be addressed as part of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board’s work.
The board Wednesday will hear oral arguments from Beyond Nuclear and other groups that have petitioned to intervene in the Holtec licensing proceeding.
