The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was urged Monday to give the public more time to comment on two controversial proceedings after the COVID-19 crisis has passed.
Currently, stakeholders have a matter of weeks to provide input on a key environmental document in federal licensing of a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in New Mexico, as well as a proposed update to NRC rules on disposal of very low-level radioactive waste (VLLW) in commercial landfills.
As of Friday, the agency had not decided on revising either deadline.
Extending the comment period for up to six months past the end of the novel coronavirus 2019 pandemic was a near-unanimous refrain from representatives for environmental and other advocacy groups during a webinar Monday on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s draft interpretative rule for VLLW disposal activities.
“I am outraged that the NRC is pushing this at this time, when people are just trying to protect their families and their lives from a worldwide pandemic. We shouldn’t be having to worry about this additional threat to our health,” said Karen Hadden, executive director of the Austin, Texas-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on March 18 also asked for more time to submit its comment, noting the challenges to agency resources while staff work remotely to help avoid spreading the respiratory disease. Waste Control Specialists, which operates a licensed radioactive waste disposal facility in the state, submitted a letter on March 25 requesting an additional 60 days to comment: “This extension would allow WCS – and likely other stakeholders and interested members of the public – time to develop and submit thoughtful and thorough feedback.”
The current deadline for comments is April 20. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was already considering a 45-day extension, but will evaluate concerns raised Monday in deciding whether to push the deadline farther out, Patricia Holahan, director of the NRC Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs, told callers.
The rule interpretation is intended to increase efficiencies and lower costs in disposal of VLLW, an informal term for the least radioactive form of Class A low-level waste, Chris McKenney, chief of the division’s Risk and Technical Analysis Branch, said during the webinar. It broadly covers soils and other materials with naturally occurring radionuclides or other residual radioactivity, generated by operations such as nuclear power plant decommissioning and largely considered safe for disposal in landfills not specifically designed for radioactive wastes.
“There’s very many benefits on getting the efficiency. It’ll help our review cycle, it’ll be a lot more transparent as to what a site can take,” McKenney said. “And also it will add efficiencies to cleanup and remediation of decommissioning sites, as they will not have the delay of where they have to ask NRC for approval before they can ship it.”
Commercial low-level waste generally must be shipped to Waste Control Specialists or the three other facilities formally licensed to take that material. But federal rules allow for an alternative disposal process, under which a generator can request authorization to ship very low-level waste on a case-by-case basis to hazardous and solid waste facilities regulated under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
The new proposal would enable the landfills to obtain an exemption to take VLLW for land burial without needing approval of each distinct shipment. Among other restrictions, the cumulative dose from all disposals in a given year could not each 25 millirem.
The proposal would apply to states in which the NRC is the lead regulator for management of radioactive materials, as well as the 39 “agreement states” that have assumed much of that authority from the federal government.
Most callers Monday were highly critical of the proposal, raising concerns including shipping any radioactive material for disposal in a facility not designed for that waste, operated by personnel not trained in its handling; the likelihood of leakage from a landfill within a period of decades; limited radiation monitoring within those sites; and the potential financial harm to the licensed disposal operations.
“Unlicensed radioactive waste dumps under the proposal would be allowed to expose the public to 2.5 times higher levels of radiation than allowed for licensed low-level radioactive waste sites under NRC’s current regulations, thus allowing unlicensed dumps to take all the radioactive waste now required to go to licensed disposal facilities,” the organization Public Emplyees for Environmental Responsibility said in a statement Thursday.
One former NRC official spoke in favor of retaining the status quo for approving shipments to non-licensed facilities.
“The question of is case-by-case needed, the answer is yes it is,” according to Larry Camper, who retired in 2015 from the position now held by Holahan. That is the only way to ensure regulatory requirements are met, he said.
Joe Weismann, vice president for radiological programs and integration management at licensed low-level waste disposal provider US Ecology, noted that agreement states such as Texas and Tennessee already allow the sort of landfill-disposal approach being considered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “This is not something that is new to the United States. This would allow other facilities who are not in agreement states to have similar programs that are assumed to be protective.”
Agency officials did not respond directly to the criticisms or questions posed during the webinar, saying instead they would be considered in considering the final rule interpretation.
Comments on the proposed rule can be submitted via regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2020-0065; or by mail, to Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Program Management, Announcements and Editing Staff.
The NRC has said it tentatively anticipates completing the proceeding by late summer.
Spent Fuel in New Mexico
Similarly, a group of 50 environmental organizations on March 25 called on the NRC to extend the public comment period on the agency’s draft environmental impact statement for Holtec International’s planned facility in New Mexico for temporary centralized storage of used fuel from commercial nuclear power plants.
The March 10 draft document includes a preliminary recommendation for licensing the site in Lea County. Comments are currently being accepted through May 22, with the document to be finalized next March. That is expected to be followed quickly by the agency’s ruling on the Holtec license application.
“At the formal termination of the national emergency as declared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), we request that the public comment period be extended for a period of 199 days,” the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, Beyond Nuclear, and a host of other organizations from New Mexico and around the nation said in a letter to the regulator.
Earlier in March, New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation also asked for an extension to the comment period.
The NRC said Tuesday morning that it would make an announcement on scheduling “in the near future.”
Holtec’s application requests a 40-year license for underground storage of 8,680 metric of used fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. With subsequent approvals by the NRC, the facility could hold over 170,000 metric tons for up to 120 years.
A separate corporate team, Interim Storage Partners, is seeking a 40-year federal license for storage of 5,000 metric tons of spent fuel in nearby West Texas. Its maximum storage could reach 40,000 metric tons.
The storage sites could offer an option for the Department of Energy to meet its legal mandate to remove spent fuel from nuclear facilities in the absence of a permanent repository.
“The pandemic is having an obvious impact on our ability to schedule and hold public meetings in New Mexico on the draft Environmental Impact Statement on the Holtec application,” NRC spokesman David McIntyre said by email this week. “We expect to announce some plans soon in that regard. Any ultimate effect these delays will have on the overall review schedule will not be known for some time. As the environmental review of the Interim Storage Partners application is proceeding shortly behind the Holtec review, it is also impossible to say at this time what effect the current situation might have on that review schedule.”
Along with eventual hearings on the draft environmental impact statement in five New Mexico cities, sessions should also be held in 18 cities that would be near used-fuel transport routes, the groups said. Cities on the list include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis.
