Mark Lombard
Director, Division of Spent Fuel Management
You
may have heard that the NRC has received an application today for a
centralized storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. We thought this
would be a good time to talk about what that facility would do, and how
we will review the application.
First
some background. “Spent fuel” is the term we use for nuclear fuel that
has been burned in a reactor. When spent fuel is removed from a reactor,
it is very hot, so it is put immediately into an onsite pool of water
for cooling. Initially, the plan in the ‘70s had been to send the spent
fuel for “reprocessing” prior to final disposal, so usable elements
could be removed and made into fresh fuel. But reprocessing fell out of
favor in the United States in the ‘80s.
Officials
from Waste Control Specialists deliver its application to construct and
operate a consolidated interim storage facility to Joel Munday, Acting
Deputy Director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and
Safeguards.
To
manage their growing inventory, nuclear utilities turned to dry
storage. The idea behind dry storage casks is to cool the fuel
passively, without the need for water, pumps or fans. The first U.S. dry
storage system was loaded in 1986. In the past 30 years, dry storage
has proven to be safe and effective.
Against
this backdrop, a Texas company, Waste Control Specialists (WCS), filed
an application with us today for a dry cask storage facility to be
located in Andrews County. WCS plans to store spent fuel from commercial
reactors; initially, from reactors that have permanently shut down.
The
application discusses utilizing dry storage casks that have previously
been approved by the NRC. The spent fuel would arrive already sealed in
canisters, so the handling would be limited to moving the canisters from
transportation to storage casks.
Ever
since Congress enacted the first law for managing spent nuclear fuel in
1982, federal policy has included some centralized site to store spent
fuel before final disposal in a repository. Congress made DOE
responsible for taking spent fuel from commercial reactors. It gave NRC
the responsibility to review the technical aspects of storage facility
designs to ensure they protect public health and safety and the
environment.
We conduct two parallel reviews – one of the safety and security aspects, the other of potential environment impacts.
But
before those reviews get underway, we will review the application to
see if it contains enough information that is of high enough quality to
allow us to do the detailed reviews. If it doesn’t, WCS will have a
chance to supplement it. If we find the application is sufficient and
accept it, we will publish a notice in the Federal Register.
This notice will alert the public that we have accepted the application
for technical review, and offer an opportunity to ask for a hearing.
Then
we begin our reviews. At the beginning of our safety and security
review, NRC staff will hold a public meeting near the site to answer
questions about our process. We'll also have public meetings with WCS as
needed so the staff can ask questions about the application. We will
document this review in a Safety Evaluation Report.
Once
we get public and stakeholder input on the scope of our environmental
review, we will conduct the review and document the results in a draft
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). We'll ask the public and
stakeholders to comment on the draft. After considering those comments,
we’ll finalize it.
We
expect the review process to take us about three years, assuming WCS
provides us with good information in a timely way during our review.
If
interested parties ask for a hearing, and their petition is granted by
our Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, then the board will consider
specific “contentions,” or challenges to our reviews of the safety,
security or environmental aspects of the proposed facility. The board
will hold a hearing on any contentions that cannot be resolved. We can’t
predict how long this hearing process would take.
The
Safety Evaluation Report, the EIS and the hearing need to be complete
before the NRC staff can make a licensing decision. If the application
meets our regulations, we're legally bound to issue a license. We don’t
consider whether there’s a need for the facility or whether we think
it’s a good idea. Our reviews look only at the regulatory requirements,
which are carefully designed to ensure public health and safety and the
environment will be protected.
Incidentally, we are expecting an application for a second centralized interim storage facility Nov. 30.
This one, to be filed by Holtec International, will be for a site in
New Mexico. We’ll follow the same process in reviewing that application.
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Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire - Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry. Nuclear Activities
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