Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have recommended rejection of a motion to dismiss a board of administrative judges that will adjudicate the license application for a spent nuclear reactor fuel site in West Texas.
The central concern from the Sierra Club, Don’t Waste Michigan, and a number of other advocacy organizations and one individual was a “suggestion of bias” by the three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board because the same judges were appointed to a board reviewing the license application for a separate used fuel storage site planned for southeastern New Mexico.
However, “historical [Atomic Safety and Licensing Board] Panel practice indicates nothing unusual in having overlap in Board membership where the proceedings have some commonality,” Sara Brock Kirkwood, counsel for NRC staff, wrote in a Dec. 6 response to the dismissal motion. She noted that the same judges comprised three of four licensing boards established for enforcement proceedings involving a reactor vessel head degradation issue at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio.
“The Joint Petitioners have not raised any specific concerns about the Board’s or Board members’ ability to be objective and fair in the adjudicatory process,” Kirkwood wrote.
Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Chief Administrative Judge Edward Hawkens will rule on the dismissal request, an NRC spokesman said Friday. The decision can be appealed to the commission itself.
A joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists is seeking a 40-year NRC license for an Andrews County, Texas, facility with maximum capacity of 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors.
Holtec International has also applied for a 40-year license, though its site in Lea County, N.M., would be designed to hold up to 173,000 metric tons of used fuel.
The Sierra Club and a coalition led by Don’t Waste Michigan have filed petitions to intervene and hearings in both license proceedings.
