Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials on Wednesday defined the agency’s role in the Department of Energy’s consent-based siting effort for nuclear waste storage, saying the best approach is to monitor the effort’s progress rather than get involved in the direction of the program
NRC Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation Director Mark Lombard and Yucca Mountain Directorate chief James Rubenstone appeared Wednesday at The George Washington University with a host of industry and government representatives for Stanford University’s “Reset of U.S. Nuclear Waste Management Strategy and Policy Series.”
Rubenstone said DOE asked NRC if it wanted to participate in the department’s consent-based siting public meetings taking place this year around the country.
“We decided that any advantages of being at the meetings would be kind of washed out by looking like we’re marching shoulder to shoulder with DOE in this process,” Rubenstone said. “We’re certainly interested, and to have NRC there maybe would undermine the independence (of NRC). I think that’s the challenge of the regulator is to show that they are engaged but not in lockstep, or in bed, or whatever metaphor you want to use, with the department.”
Lombard said NRC is “monitoring the meetings” in which DOE is discussing its plan to secure community approval for establishing pilot, interim, and ultimately permanent storage sites for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
“We’ve really wrestled with what should our role be as an independent agency at those meetings, and we thought the best thing to do is to monitor and see how those go forward, because we don’t have a role in consent-based siting,” Lombard said. “We don’t do policy. We don’t set the national strategy, but our primary responsibility is not to be a barrier to national strategy as it goes forward, as it’s being implemented.”
Eventually NRC will have to decide on whether to issue licenses to private companies looking to build and operate interim storage facilities for nuclear waste under the consent-based siting program. Texas-based Waste Control Specialists has submitted its license application to NRC for a facility in Andrews County, Texas, and Holtec International plans to submit its own for a site in New Mexico.
