The Sierra Club should be allowed to intervene in part in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of a license application for a planned spent nuclear reactor fuel storage facility in Texas, according to agency staff.
However, staff said a coalition of environmental groups led by Don’t Waste Michigan failed to show standing or submit viable contentions against the application, so its intervention petition should be rejected.
A three-member NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will ultimately decide which groups are allowed to intervene and be granted hearings in the license proceeding. The other petitioners are the advocacy group Beyond Nuclear and two oil and gas concerns in the region: Fasken Land and Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners.
Interim Storage Partners, a partnership of Orano and Waste Control Specialists (WCS), in June applied for a 40-year NRC license to build and operate a facility in Andrews County, Texas, that could hold up to 40,000 metric tons of used fuel now stranded at nuclear power plants around the country. The application updates a request previously submitted, and suspended for more than a year, by WCS; the Dallas-based company would host the facility on its waste disposal property.
In a Dec. 10 recommendation, posted to the NRC website on Tuesday, staff said the Sierra Club had shown standing to intervene in the licensing proceeding due to proximity of certain members to the storage location – some less than 6 miles away. Staff said part of one of the Sierra Club’s contentions should be admitted.
Staff, though, said the members of the Don’t Waste Michigan joint petition had not shown they will sustain “a concrete and particularized injury-in-fact” that could be linked to the Interim Storage Partners project. On that basis alone the joint petition should be rejected, staff said, though it also disputed the viability of its contentions.
