Holtec International is now eyeing March for submitting its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico.
Holtec had originally planned to submit the application in November, but spokeswoman Caitlin Marmion said by email Monday that the company “is taking the time necessary to properly prepare the site specific application for the HI-STORE Consolidated Interim Storage Facility.”
“It is a comprehensive and complicated endeavor,” Marmion wrote. “We are taking the steps necessary to ensure our application is complete and comprehensive in all respects.”
The company plans to build a 70,000-metric-ton-capacity facility about 12 miles away from the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. Holtec, in partnership with the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, will look to compete with Waste Control Specialists, which submitted its own application in April to the NRC for a 40,000-ton-capacity facility in West Texas, near the border with New Mexico.
The two facilities could fall under DOE’s consent-based siting program for nuclear waste storage, which is the Obama administration’s replacement for the canceled geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The interim facilities are intended to ease the transition of an estimated 74,000 metric tons of nuclear waste stranded at commercial nuclear plants around the country into permanent storage or disposal.
Holtec on Tuesday announced that it had received New Mexico State Board of Finance approval to purchase 1,000 acres of land from the Eddy-Lea Alliance for the consolidated interim storage facility site, which it considered a major milestone in moving forward with plans.
Holtec in July completed its design and safety analysis simulation for the storage system planned for the New Mexico facility, and finished its license submittal package for NRC approval on Aug. 30.
Ed Mayer, program director for the HI-STORE Consolidated Interim Storage facility, provided an update on Sept. 9 at the ExchangeMonitor’s 2016 RadWaste Summit in Las Vegas. He noted that the project has support in New Mexico from the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs; Eddy and Lea counties; Gov. Susana Martinez; and the state House and Senate.
“HI-STORE will be a universal solution to the nation’s problem of spent nuclear fuel, and we have strong support,” Mayer said. “I don’t know if it’s consent by definition – we’re going to have to work through that – but we surely have strong support, and it’s going to support the long-term repository that DOE’s going to come up with.”
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Tuesday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that he is encouraged by private efforts in the nuclear waste storage arena.
“We need to move to interim storage, to consolidated interim storage of spent fuel, start moving it away from reactors,” Moniz said. “And what’s encouraging here is the emergence of private entities that are prepared to move forward with what appears to be consent, along with the required political change.”
