An Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected a clean-energy advocacy organization’s petition to submit a late argument against licensing a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in West Texas.
The Austin-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition said it should be allowed to file the late contention based on data that was not available at the time of its initial November 2018 petition as part of a coalition of environmental groups. However, SEED failed to meet requirements under federal regulations on requests for hearings or intervention before the federal agency, the three-member ASLB ruled on Dec. 13.
“There being no other contention pending, this proceeding is terminated,” according to the board’s memorandum and order.
Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists, is seeking a 40-year NRC license for storage of 5,000 metric tons of used fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants. With additional agency approvals, the facility on the Waste Control Specialists property in Andrews County, Texas, could hold up to 40,000 metric tons of the radioactive waste for 120 years.
The operation, along with a separate storage facility planned nearby in southeastern New Mexico, could finally enable the Department of Energy to meet its legal mandate to remove used fuel from over 70 commercial nuclear facilities around the nation. The agency is more than two decades past the Jan. 31, 1998, deadline set by Congress, but still does not have a repository for the radioactive waste.
Interim Storage Partners filed its license application in June 2018, picking up an effort that had been started two years earlier solely by Waste Control Specialists. The Dallas-based company had suspended the proceeding during its legal battle with the Department of Justice over an ultimately court-blocked merger with nuclear services firm EnergySolutions.
A number of environmental and anti-nuclear organizations requested hearings to argue contentions on potential environmental, safety, security, and economic dangers posed by the planned facility. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ultimately rejected all the petitions based on a combination of lack of standing to intervene and inadmissible contentions, including the filing from a group led by Don’t Waste Michigan and featuring SEED.
The quasi-judicial panel, though, determined SEED had standing to intervene in the proceeding. The organization used that opening in October to appeal for a late contention. It said a September report from the federal Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board had found that the transport of used fuel into storage would take decades longer than the Texas site’s initial license period. The issues raised in the report “vindicate and go beyond the problems raised in SEED Coalition’s earlier contentions,” it said.
While SEED framed that as new information, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board concurred with the counterargument from Interim Storage Partners and NRC staff that the data “was either previously available or not materially different from information that was previously available.”
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board report acknowledges certain technical issues must be addressed before all U.S. spent nuclear fuel can be moved from the power plants where it was generated. But that does not mean all those issues must be dealt with before transport begins, leaving the door open for expedited shipment of 5,000 metric tons of used fuel to Texas within Interim Storage Partners’ licensed period, the ASLB said.
The SEED Coalition did not respond to a query Monday regarding whether it would appeal the board’s decision to the full commission.
The Sierra Club filed a largely identical request to file a late contention on licensing Holtec International’s planned facility in Lea County, N.M., which is intended to have a maximum capacity exceeding 100,000 metric tons. Another Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, technically separate but featuring the same three members, had not ruled in that case as of deadline Friday. It previously also rejected all intervention petitions on the Holtec license application, filed by a similar set of groups to those that soughtearings in the Interim Storage Partners proceeding.
Nearly all of the organizations that filed contentions in both licensings have appealed the ASLB rejections. Most recently, the Sierra Club on Dec. 13 appealed rejection of eight of its original 29 contentions. The commission has yet to rule on any of the appeals.
Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expect next spring to issue draft environmental impact reports on both license applications, with the final documents anticipated a year later. Separate safety reports on each project are also due in spring 2021, ahead of rulings on the license applications.
Interim Storage Partners hopes to receive its license in 2021 or 2022 and to begin operations by 2024. Holtec hopes to open its facility by 2023.
Then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in November that DOE legally cannot contract directly with the commercial operations for storage of the used fuel. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act prohibits the agency from taking title to the material until a permanent repository is available. That increases the likelihood that Interim Storage Partners and Holtec could do business directly with nuclear utilities that currently own the spent fuel.
