The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week officially resumed its technical review of a license application for a facility in West Texas that would store up to 40,000 metric tons of used nuclear reactor fuel.
A partnership of Waste Control Specialists and Orano in June filed an updated license application for the planned consolidated interim storage facility in Andrews County. That was more than a year after Waste Control Specialists asked the NRC to suspend review of its-then solo license application.
“The NRC staff has reviewed your request and concludes that the revised license application provides information sufficient to resume its detailed review,” Chau-John Nguyen, a senior project manager in the NRC’s Spent Fuel Licensing Branch, wrote in a letter to Jeff Isakson, president and CEO of the Interim Storage Partners joint venture. The letter, dated Aug. 21, was posted Friday to the NRC website.
Agency personnel will now restart work on the environmental impact statement and separate safety evaluation for the license application, Nguyen wrote. The NRC will also post separate Federal Register notices giving the public an opportunity to request a hearing on the application and for the refreshed scoping period for the environmental impact statement.
The agency anticipates completing the safety, security, and environmental evaluations of the application in August 2020, according to Nguyen. That schedule could encompass up to four rounds of requests for additional information on safety and environmental issues in 2018 and 2019.
Interim Storage Partners is seeking a 40-year storage license, covering eight phases of 5,000 metric tons of radioactive waste, at the Waste Control Specialists disposal complex. Holtec International is also seeking an NRC license for a larger facility just across the state border in New Mexico. The two properties could help the Department of Energy meet its congressional mandate to remove all U.S. used nuclear fuel from the commercial reactors where it was generated.
