SAVANNAH, Ga. – Waste Control Specialists and Orano plan within the next two months to formally request that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission resume its review of a stalled license application for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel in West Texas, according to the executive leading their partnership.
The companies expect in the second quarter to formalize their new joint venture, Interim Storage Partners, and then to notify the NRC they are ready to move ahead with the review, said Jeff Isakson, an Orano vice president who shifted to become CEO of Interim Storage Partners. The second quarter ends on June 30.
Dallas-based WCS in April 2016 filed the license application for a facility with maximum anticipated capacity of 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel, to be built at its waste disposal complex in Andrews County, Texas. Shortly after the regulator moved into its full technical review of the application, the company in April 2017 put it on hold while it awaited the outcome of its contested buyout by Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions. A federal judge blocked the deal last June, and Waste Control Specialists was instead bought in January by private equity firm J.F. Lehman. The joint venture with Orano was announced in March.
NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki last week said reviews of both proposed interim spent fuel storage facilities – the anticipated WCS-Orano project and a site planned by Holtec International in southeastern New Mexico – would take about three years.
The NRC is ready, upon request, to quickly resume its review of the license application for the Texas facility, Michael Layton, director of the NRC’s Division of Spent Fuel Management, said at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Used Fuel Management Conference here.
