The public will have an in-person opportunity Thursday to weigh in on Westinghouse’s application for renewal of its federal license for the Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, following multiple safety and infrastructure incidents that have drawn concern from state and federal agencies.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has scheduled a public comment forum for 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Medallion Conference Center, 7309 Garners Ferry Road in Columbia. Preregistration to comment is available by contacting Antoinette Walker-Smith at 301-415-6957 or by email at [email protected].
The 550,000-square-foot plant in Hopkins, S.C., has been producing nuclear fuel for power plants since 1969. The current operations license expires on Sept. 30, 2027. The company in 2014 applied for a 40-year renewal.
The NRC is seeking comments on its new draft environmental assessment (EA) for the application. Released last month, the document reaffirms the finding of the agency’s initial environmental assessment in June 2018 that there would be no significant impacts to the environment by renewing the license. However, the NRC withdrew the earlier document after two incidents at the plant.
In July 2018, an equipment leak resulted in uranium entering the subsurface of the building. Then, in December, the NRC discovered that uranium levels in the groundwater were above drinking standards. “Because of that new information and the public concerns about the releases, the NRC decided to re-open its environmental review,” the agency said in the new draft environmental assessment.
The draft EA also mentions two other incidents that occurred this year. In May, workers found that rainwater had leaked through the roof of a carrier that was transporting a drum of uranium. The water then leaked into the drum inside the carrier, causing a trace amount of uranium inside the drum to also leak out. On July 12, a drum filled with uranium had just been sent to a storage facility when a chemical reaction caused it to catch fire and the drum lid to pop off. There were no injuries or contaminations in either incident.
