Holtec International said Friday it has successfully completed design and safety analysis simulation for the storage system it plans to use at a consolidated interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility in southeastern New Mexico.
The analysis, using Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved simulation methods, showed that a number of safety margins are unaffected or are improved when the company’s NUHOMS 24PT1-DSC canister is up-righted and stored in Holtec’s HI-STORM UMAX subterranean storage system in vertical orientation, according to the company.
“We are compiling the license submittal package and will submit it to the NRC for approval on August 29, 2016,” Stefan Anton, Holtec vice president for corporate engineering, said in a press release. “We had held a pre-submittal meeting on this submittal with the NRC, which helped us align our analysis models with NRC’s expectations, on April 4, 2016. We are proud to offer this ground -breaking technology to the nuclear industry which fulfills our drive to provide a state-of-the-art universal storage system able to store all of the used fuel and high level waste bearing canisters scattered at sites around the country and thus to advance DOE’s vision of a safest possible consolidated interim storage facility.”
Holtec plans to by November submit a license application to operate a 70,000-metric-ton capacity facility about 12 miles away from the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. Competitor Waste Control Specialists in April submitted its own application to the NRC to operate a 40,000-metric-ton-capacity interim storage facility in Texas near the border with New Mexico. The facilities would operate under DOE’s consent-based siting plan for nuclear waste, which is the Obama administration’s replacement for canceled repository plans at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Department of Energy plans for operation of a pilot storage facility by 2021; one or more interim facilities by 2025; and at least one permanent geologic repository by 2048.
The April 4 meeting “was to discuss Holtec’s plans to submit an amendment application to Certificate of Compliance No. 1040 for the HI-STORM UMAX Canister Storage System, in support of a site-specific independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) license application for the HI-STORE consolidated storage facility, to be located in Southeast New Mexico on land owned by the Eddy/Lea Energy Alliance,” the NRC said in a May 3 memo.
