SAVANNAH, GA – The Supreme Court will probably rule by July 3 on whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authority to license privately-held interim storage facilities, a leading nuclear industry lawyer said during the 19th Radwaste Summit.
That was the assessment offered Tuesday by Michael McBride, a partner with Van Ness Feldman during the opening day of Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit. This one is being held at Savannah, Ga. McBride appeared virtually from another location.
The high court heard oral arguments in March centered around whether NRC has the right to issue the license to Orano USA and Waste Control Specialists, to develop an interim spent fuel facility in West Texas.
“As the NRC sees it, there is no legal distinction between at-reactor storage and away-from-reactor storage licenses because the statute gives NRC the authority to issue ‘possession’ licenses regardless of what other may exist or have existed at the location proposed,” McBride said in his presentation.
Regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, it will not have a “direct” effect on the Department of Energy’s efforts to cite its own interim spent fuel storage facilities, said Erica Bickford, who is director of the Office of Storage and Transportation within DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. No matter what the high court decides, a privately-held interim storage site will not relieve DOE’s liability for taking possession of spent fuel currently stored at nuclear power reactors across the country, Bickford said.
“Right now all options are on the table,” said Marla Morales, director of what is now called the Office of Collaboration-based Siting within DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. DOE under the new administration will continue to look for willing host communities, she said. Allowing a spent fuel storage facility to be built locally could be an economic game-changer for some counties, she said.
Under nuclear executive orders issued May 23 by the Donald Trump administration, the relevant federal agencies now have less than 240 days to issue a report on what should be done on issues like interim storage and permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste, said Bruce Montgomery. Montgomery is a Nuclear Energy Institute director for decommissioning and spent fuel.
Editor’s note: Article revised at 2:20 p.m. Eastern Time to correct errors in fifth and sixth paragraph.
