Waste Control Specialists on Wednesday responded to Nuclear Regulatory Commission requests for supplemental information (RSIs) concerning the company’s application to operate a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Andrews County, Texas.
NRC spokeswoman Maureen Conley said via email Wednesday that the WCS filing is the first batch of responses to the agency’s RSIs on the application. This batch includes responses to two RSIs concerning the application’s environmental report, Conley wrote.
The NRC review of the application itself cannot begin until it has additional technical data in several areas of the 3,000-page application, which Waste Control Specialists has committed to providing by October.
“We hope that clarifying key aspects of the application and improving our communications to the public will be two significant steps that will help reassure the public and get us a step closer to making interim storage a reality,” WCS CEO and President Rod Baltzer wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
WCS has applied for a 40-year license for a facility with the capacity to hold up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel now stored at commercial reactor sites around the country. The company hopes to begin operations at the facility by 2021.
