How long Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station’s 750 metric tons of radioactive waste will be stored onsite isn’t set in stone, but Nuclear Regulatory Commission representatives found themselves reassuring citizens yesterday that a 200-year storage study is just that – a study.
The possibility of storing spent fuel from nuclear plants, including Oyster Creek Generating Station, for as long as 200 years is «an analysis, not a decision,» representatives from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission repeatedly told concerned citizens during a webinar on Tuesday.
"We're not making a statement defining what interim storage is," Jim Rubenstein said. "The NRC's role is to assure whatever storage that takes place is done safely and securely.»
The NRC is in the beginning stages of developing a draft environmental impact statement for an update of the NRC's Waste Confidence decision and rule.
«This is the beginning of a multi-year project the NRC staff is doing," Rubenstein said.
The draft report "Background and Preliminary Assumptions for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS—Long-Term Waste Confidence Update» will include an analyses of environmental impacts related to long-term handling, storage and transportation of spent fuel. It discusses several storage scenarios including at nuclear power plants, regional storage sites or a combination of storage and reprocessing of spent fuel.
«The EIS is being done to understand the impact of long-term storage," Christine Pineda of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards said. "It is to analyze future scenarios and isn't directed towards regulatory action."
Many citizens showed concerns that because the NRC staff will be analyzing long-term storage, a predetermination has been made that spent fuel can be stored on site for 200 or more years.
"The staff thinks they could do an analysis for 200 years," Rubenstein said. "To some extent that's an arbitrary choice just to give them something to analyze. "
In 2010, the Waste Confidence Decision and Rule found that spent fuel can be safely managed until it undergoes final disposition but the NRC also directed staff to prepare a long-term update for extended storage of spent fuel, which will be informed by the current EIS.
Since the EIS has yet to be updated, a conclusion has not been made on the impacts of storing spent fuel storage for more than 200 years, Pineda said. The Commission has yet to determine whether such an action will significantly affect the quality of the environment.
"We have not made up that conclusion yet," she said. "That conclusion will come out of the EIS."
Oyster Creek, which is set to close in December 2019, stores its more than 750 metric tons of waste in a spent fuel pool on site.
In March, New Jersey joined New York, Vermont and Connecticut in a legal challenge of the NRC’s revised «waste confidence rule» that extends the time spent nuclear fuel can be stored on-site at a nuclear power plant from 30 to 60 years after the plant shuts down operations.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan then told Patch that the agency has done numerous studies on the safety of storing spent fuel at power reactor sites in the United States.
The commission deemed it safe to store the spent fuel in either circulating-water pools or dry casks for at least 60 years after the reactor is shut down and is assessing the environmental impacts and safety of spent fuel and high-level waste storage at nuclear power plants beyond 120 years, he said.
"[The EIS] is just analytical," Rubenstein said. "It's not saying we're making a call. They shouldn't expect that this 200 years is tied to any specific licensing action."
The Waste Confidence conveys the NRC's conclusions that safe storage and disposal are feasible and will be available, Pineda said. However, waste confidence is not a regulatory program and is not a licensing action.
The report will analyze methodologies including composite, generic sites; generic impacts; a range of impacts to NRC EIS's; and qualitative and quantitative analyses.
Preliminary scenarios for comparing impacts in the EIS will include onsite (at-reactor storage, regional storage, centralized storage, and a combination plus some reprocessing.
The EIS is expected to be completed by 2019. In the meantime, the NRC will finalize the current report, address comments, hold public scoping under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA and develop a draft EIS.
"The impacts of storage will be done by 2019," Pineda said. "But the decision with storage will be made by congress…How it actually plays out is different from the EIS. It could happen in the next couple years under policy…That can very well be something that goes in parallel with this EIS."
Prior to the webinar Janet Tauro, co-chair of Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety (GRAMMES said this move and the report shows that the NRC has no waste confidence.
"Waste confidence is what you do with the waste, are you confident that you could dispose of it," she said. "There isn't anything to do with the waste and that's a horrifying prospect for Lacey Township and all of the Jersey Shore."
The NRC will continue to accept public comment by e-mail through Feb. 17. Send your comments toWCOutreach@nrc.gov.
The report, "Background and Preliminary Assumptions for an Environmental Impact Statement- Long-Term Waste Confidence Update" can be found here. It is also attached to this story as a PDF.
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