Holtec International said last week it is moving into the second phase of its application for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to build and operate a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in southeastern New Mexico.
The first phase wrapped up March 31 with the submission of the application. The NRC is now conducting a 60-day acceptance review to determine whether the document has the sufficient data to support the agency’s full technical evaluation, which would take about three years.
In a press release Thursday, the New Jersey-based company said in its second phase of the application it would file a number of amendment requests to allow its planned HI-STORE facility to store canisters that encompass the breadth of dry storage systems in use at U.S. nuclear plants. The initial submittal covered just one canister type supplied by AREVA.
Holtec plans a facility with capacity to store 120,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. The current stockpile of spent fuel stranded on-site at nuclear plants stands at about 75,000 metric tons and is growing by 2,000 tons annually. The outline of the Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal 2018, released ahead of the full version anticipated next month, indicates that some portion of $120 million would be used for ongoing preparations to consolidate that used fuel in interim storage (the rest would go toward the moribund Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada).
“Our goal is to provide to the industry and DOE a unified consolidated interim storage solution to store all of America’s used fuel canisters at the HI-STORE CIS. HI-STORM UMAX was engineered well over a decade ago with the goal of providing a universal canister storage facility that is suitable for the post-9/11 age. Now we are implementing our vision. We are committed to providing access to the licensed HI-STORE CIS to every nuclear plant owner who chooses to engage with us regardless of the identity of the original canister supplier,” Holtec Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Pierre Oneid said in the release.
Last week, Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists asked the NRC to temporarily suspend review of its license application for a planned spent fuel facility in West Texas.
