Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
3/6/2015
Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) ripped the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Rule this week for allowing the indefinite storage of spent fuel on-site at reactors. The NRC issued last August its revised Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Rule, formerly known as Waste Confidence, along with a General Environment Impact Statement that found storage on-site was protective of public safety for an indefinite timeframe. Feinstein, citing the Fukushima accident in Japan, called the rule “unacceptable” for the threat a disaster could cause to host communities across the country. “While the rule does not license storage of spent fuel at any specific reactor site, it appears to give a carte blanche to nuclear power plants operators to continue generate nuclear waste without a permanent solution,” Feinstein said during a budget hearing for the NRC. “This is unacceptable to me.”
Feinstein went on to say that the departure from a waste confidence approach, which relied on progress on the federal government towards the completion of a repository, was a trick to allow the nuclear industry to keep operating without a plan for spent fuel. “Instead it seems to be a rule designed solely to keep the nuclear industry operating,” she said. “I deeply believe we need a new policy on nuclear waste.”
NRC Chair Steven Burns, though, pointed to the NRC’s mission in forming a technical basis, not a policy basis, for its rulemaking.“From the regulatory standpoint, our job and responsibility is to call the technical shots as we see them,” Burns responded to Feinstein. “A lot of those questions on local support are issues, and I recognize that. Our job is to ensure that we have oversight of licensees and to ensure that they are carrying out requirements for spent fuel storage and safe operation.”
Commission Denies Appeals to Continued Storage Rule
The NRC, meanwhile, late last week voted down the appeal of its Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Rule after determining its interpretation of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 only requires the Commission to prove the technical feasibility of continued storage and not the likelihood of a repository. The appeal, filed by a collection of environmental groups, sought to halt licensing/re-licensing reviews of nuclear power plants until the NRC deliver the necessary findings ordered by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, as outlined in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
The NRC, however, rejected the appeal, stating that the petitioners’ proposal for a waste confidence safety finding was met by the General Environmental Impact Statement released with the rulemaking. “Indeed, our confidence in the safety and technical feasibility of systems for the storage and disposal of spent fuel has only increased since the late 1970s, as demonstrated by our expanded regulatory scheme and the ongoing licensing of such systems, as well as the efforts that are under way—both in the United States and abroad—to develop repositories for the disposal of spent fuel,” the NRC said in its Memorandum and Order denying the petition. “Thus, today we not only address Petitioners’ concerns, but we also take the opportunity to confirm the continued validity of our determinations regarding the technical feasibility of safe spent fuel storage and ultimate disposal in a repository.”
The challengers include many of the parties involved in the original suit that required the NRC to re-do its Waste Confidence rulemaking with a stricter look at environmental effects of continued storage of spent nuclear fuel, including: a state coalition of New York, Vermont, and Connecticut; the Prairie Island Indian Community; a group of nine environmental groups; and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The NRC, for its part, determined in its response rulemaking that spent fuel could be safely stored on site well past a reactor’s lifespan. When the NRC first issued a revised waste confidence rule in 2010, the Commission extended the length of time assumed to be safe for storage of spent fuel at a reactor site from 30 to 60 years. In its new update, the NRC based its rule on a generic environmental impact statement that found the environmental impact of storing spent fuel on-site was small in most categories, including an indefinite timeframe. This final rulemaking, though, removed language concerning a timeline for the availability of a repository after the Commission determined that was a policy decision outside the NRC’s regulation jurisdiction.
