Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/1/2014
While stakeholders continue to wade through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s recently released draft final Waste Confidence rule (now known as the Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel rule), it appears not much has changed since the proposed rule was released last September. Much of the rule remains intact with some minor alterations that appear to only change some language, not substance. Because this rulemaking looked at the environmental impacts of storage without an end point, language concerning a timeline of repository availability was removed from the rule. “Although future repository availability remains an important consideration because it provides an eventual disposition path for spent fuel, it is no longer needed to provide a time limit for the environmental impacts analysis because the GEIS evaluates the environmental impacts of indefinite storage,” the draft final rule said.
Similarly, the rule does not address safety because it did not relate to the legal requirement the court issued. “The generic conclusion that spent fuel can be stored safely beyond the operating life of a power reactor has been a component of all past Waste Confidence proceedings and remains part of this proceeding,” the Staff wrote. “There is not, however, any legal requirement for the NRC to codify this generic safety conclusion in the rule text.”
The NRC’s proposed waste confidence ruling, released last year, found that spent fuel can be stored on site for 60 years past a reactor’s licensed life. When the NRC first issued a revised waste confidence rule in 2010, the Commission extended the length of time assumed to be safe for storage of spent fuel at a reactor site from 30 to 60 years. In 2012, though, a federal court found the NRC’s rule deficient and mandated an updated version, along with an environmental impact statement. In response, the NRC based its draft revised rule on a generic environmental impact statement that found the environmental impact of storing spent fuel on-site was small in most categories. The NRC defines small amount of damage as “environmental effects that are not detectable or are so minor that they will neither destabilize nor noticeably alter any important attribute of the resource.” With the draft final rule in the Commission’s hand, it appears the NRC will meet the self-imposed Oct. 3 deadline.
NRDC Upset with Draft Final Rule
The Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the parties that brought the case to the courts for review, was not pleased with the minimal changes in the draft final rule. “I’ll start with the caveat that we just had the document arrive late last week, and I am busy with a lot of other matters, but my preliminary reviews seems to indicate that there is a lot of text that has been produced in the last six months, but not a lot of change in the fundamental disagreements that we had with the draft to this draft final document,” said Geoffrey Fettus, NRDC’s senior project attorney for its nuclear program. “It seems like most of the comments we made in December have not be addressed in any meaningful fashion.”
The NRDC has been arguing that the rulemaking does not address the court’s demand at all. By making the issue an administrational decision on whether or not to complete an EIS, the NRC failed to actually look at the real problems of the environmental impact of indefinite storage, especially if more and more waste is being produced without a final resting place. The slight changes in the final draft rule would amount to “superficial” changes, Fettus said.
Fettus also indicated that litigation could be upcoming should the rule stay as it is proposed right now. “We are going to have to see what if anything the Commission requires as far as changes,” he said. “We will certainly examine all of our options going forward. If the draft final as we see it today goes forward in this form, I think there is certainly potential for litigation.”
Industry Praises Rule
In contrast to the NRDC, the Nuclear Energy Institute praised the NRC for its work on the draft final rule. “The rule as submitted by the staff to the Commission comprehensively evaluates the environmental impacts of used fuel storage during the period following license expiration until removal for disposal by the federal government,” NEI’s Vice President and Chief Counsel Ellen Ginsberg said in a statement “While we are still reviewing the GEIS in detail, the NRC’s generic consideration of the environmental impacts of continued storage appears to fully comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.”
Ginsberg went on to praise the rule for adequately addressing the court’s issues. “The GEIS addresses the three specific issues identified by the D.C. Circuit in the 2012 decision,” she said. “The GEIS examines the reasonably foreseeable consequences of a failure of the federal government to establish a repository. The GEIS also provides ample support for its finding that future leaks would have small environmental impacts. Additionally, the GEIS evaluates the impacts of spent fuel pool fires, considering both probability and consequences, and thoroughly shows spent fuel pool fires have small probability-weighted impacts.”
