The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will license the nuclear waste interim storage facility Holtec International intends to build in southeastern New Mexico, company President and CEO Kris Singh proclaimed Wednesday, noting that the prospect is now a matter of political will.
“We gave an exquisite and consequential gift to our nation,” Singh said of Holtec’s license application submission to the NRC on March 31. “We have provided a solution to a used fuel storage problem that’s been nagging the economy, the industry, the country since as far back as 1982.”
Singh appeared with a group of Holtec executives and officials at a press conference on Capitol Hill. He said he expects expeditious review and approval from the NRC for a facility Holtec hopes to begin operating by 2022.
John Heaton, chairman of the Carlsbad Mayor’s Nuclear Task Force, said during the press event that New Mexico has been working with Holtec to develop the concept for six years and is excited that plans are coming to fruition. The Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, a coalition of Carlsbad and three other cities and counties in the region, is partnering with Holtec on the project. ELEA, a limited liability corporation owned by the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs, and Eddy and Lea counties, owns the industrial site that the facility will occupy.
“We basically think that consolidated interim storage is the missing link, the missing piece if you will, in the management of the back end of the fuel cycle,” Heaton said.
Holtec has joined the coalition to build the 120,000-metric-ton-capacity facility, to be located about 12 miles from the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists is also seeking an NRC operating license for its own interim storage facility, about 35 miles away in West Texas.
Roughly 75,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is now stored on-site at nuclear power plants around the country. That amount rises by about 2,000 metric tons per year. Interim sites would hold the waste until the Department of Energy builds a permanent repository.
Challenges Pending on Storage Sites
Also on Wednesday, the advocacy group Beyond Nuclear announced that it would file challenges with the NRC against both interim storage applications, contesting environmental, safety, and security risks surrounding transportation of nuclear waste and operation of the facilities.
The group has until May 31 to file a legal challenge with the NRC against the WCS application and an April 28 deadline to file comments for the NRC’s scoping process for its environmental impac statement on the application. Filing dates for the Holtec application have not yet been determined.
Through legal intervention, if Beyond Nuclear establishes legal standing and if its contentions are admitted for a full hearing, an NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel would review the case. Any appeal would be reviewed by the NRC commissioners, and if there’s an appeal at that level, the case could move into federal court. Kevin Kamps, with Beyond Nuclear, said in an interview Thursday that the group is prepared to contest the nuclear waste sites until the bitter end.
“Holtec’s scheme would launch unprecedented, countless thousands of ‘Mobile Chernobyls,’ ‘Dirty Bombs on Wheels,’ and/or ‘Floating Fukushimas’ – irradiated nuclear fuel shipments by road, rail, and/or waterway – through most states,” Beyond Nuclear wrote in a statement Wednesday. “These shipments would be vulnerable to severe accidents, and/or intentional attacks, risking the release of catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity, as they pass through population centers or other high-risk zones.”