Waste Control Specialists said Friday it has hired a new executive to manage its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for development and operation of a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.
Mike Ford’s title will be vice president of licensing and corporate compliance. He replaces Scott Kirk, WCS’ former vice president of licensing and regulatory affairs, who joined BWX Technologies in August.
“We’re excited to have Mike join our leadership team. WCS is very familiar with Mike dating back to his terms as Chairman of both the Texas Compact Commission and the Texas Radiation Advisory Board, and most recently, as a consultant to WCS on radiation safety projects,” WCS President and CEO Rod Baltzer said in a blog post. “Now we expect him to shepherd the ongoing application process with the NRC to license, construct and operate a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF) for used nuclear fuel.”
The company submitted its license application in April for a 40,000-metric-ton spent fuel storage facility that would be built in its West Texas waste management complex. It is now in a months-long process of providing supplemental information to the agency ahead of the actual NRC application review, which is expected to take at least two years. WCS hopes to begin constructing the facility in the second half of 2019 and accepting waste in early 2021.
Ford has more than 30 years of experience in the business, Baltzer said, including in radiation protection and safety management programs, along with regulatory compliance, public policy at the state and federal levels, and public outreach. At the Texas Radiation Advisory Board and Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission, his work involved contact with state and federal elected officials, nuclear industry executives, and the public.
Roughly 74,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel are now stored on-site at reactor facilities around the country, due to the Department of Energy’s failure to date to establish a permanent storage facility for the material. The WCS facility, and a 70,000-metric-ton site planned for southeastern New Mexico by Holtec International, could be part of the answer to the nuclear waste storage dilemma.