US Nuclear Regulatory Commission members approved Tuesday a final rule on the continued storage of utility spent fuel and then lifted, when the new rule goes into effect, a suspension they imposed in 2012 on several categories of reactor licensing activities.
The rule says that fuel can be safely stored at power reactor sites for at least 160 years after their operating license expires.
The four commissioners approved both actions during a 14-minute affirmation session with Commissioner William Magwood's voting via speaker phone. NRC spokesman David McIntyre said in an email that Magwood's flight from Chicago was canceled Monday night and that he was on the road from the airport to the office when the meeting occurred.
The affirmation vote paves the way for staff to publish the final rule and supporting final generic environmental impact statement in the Federal Register, which McIntyre said will occur sometime in September. The rule will go into effect 30 days after the publication date.
The continued storage rule, formerly known as waste confidence, will replace NRC's 2010 waste confidence decision and spent fuel storage rule that a federal court threw out in 2012 and sent back to the agency to be redone. Later that year, commissioners suspended final decisions on issuing combined construction permit-operating licenses for new reactors and on renewing the operating licenses of existing nuclear units until a new rule was finalized.
The suspension also affected the renewal of operating licenses for independent spent-fuel storage installations, also known as ISFSIs, at reactor sites, and the issuance of early site permits that allow an applicant to receive NRC approval of a greenfield site for a new reactor while still considering whether to build a nuclear unit.
Commission confidence that spent fuel can be safely stored until it is disposed of is central to NRC's ability to license new reactors and to renew the operating licenses of existing units.
The memorandum and order that commissioners approved in a separate vote during the affirmation session lifts the suspension when the final rule goes into effect. It also directs staff on the resolution of pending contentions -- or challenges -- in licensing cases that center on the continued storage of spent fuel.
Of the 24 licensing reviews suspended in 2012, "only two are awaiting issuance of the final rule" before licensing decisions can be made, NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane said in a letter to federal lawmakers earlier this month. She said that "each of the 24 actions has a unique schedule that is not directly tied to the completion of the continued storage rule," noting that some might have issues not related to spent fuel storage that must be addressed before a licensing decision can be made.
Macfarlane's comments were in response to a July 23 letter she received from 19 Republican members of the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee. They sought information on when NRC would complete work on a new final rule, when a schedule of agency action on pending license applications would be available and on what hurdles, if any, are there to NRC's resuming that licensing work.
A list of NRC reactor licensing activities that the agency put on hold in 2012 shows that first in line for licensing action are an application Exelon Generation filed with NRC in 2011 for a 20-year renewal for the operating licenses for Limerick-1 and -2 in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and an application the company filed in 2010 for a 40-year renewal of the operating license for the ISFSI at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear generating station in Lusby, Maryland.
Licensing decisions on those applications can be made as soon as the new rule goes into effect, according to the list.
