Beyond Nuclear's 3rd set of public comments on NRC's ISP/WCS CISF DEIS, re: Docket ID NRC-2016-0231, and report number NUREG-2239 -- 40-year timeframe is an inappropriately, arbitrarily, and capriciously short scope

Submitted via <WCS_CISF_EIS@nrc.gov>

Dear NRC Staff,

 

We submit these comments on behalf of our members and supporters, not only in New Mexico and Texas, near the targeted ISP/WCS CISF site, but across both of these states, and the rest of the country, along road, rail, and waterway routes that would be used for high risk, highly radioactive waste shipments to ISP's CISF, as well as to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, on Western Shoshone land -- wrongly and illegally assumed by ISP/WCS, as well as by NRC, to someday become a permanent disposal repository.

The following subject matter has gotten little to no attention in NRC's ISP/WCS CISF DEIS, a far cry from NEPA's legally binding "hard look" requirement: the 40-year timeframe is an inappropriately, arbitrarily, and capriciously short scope. 

NRC's time-limited focus on just 40 years of "temporary" or "interim storage" is inappropriately, arbitrarily and capriciously short, especially given ISP/WCS's own admission in its license application to NRC that "interim storage" could persist for 120 years; in response to a Request for Information from DOE (the U.S. Department of Energy), Holtec (ISP/WCS's complement, not competitor, in the words of Holtec CEO Krishna Singh, at Holtec's Capitol Hill press conference in April 2017, announcing its CISF license application; the two CISFs would be just 40 miles apart) admitted a CISF could operate for 300 years; and in NRC's own 2014 Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Rule and Generic EIS, the agency acknowledged away-from-reactor ISFSIs (Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations) could go on indefinitely (that is, "forevermore," à la the classic book by that title: Forevermore: Nuclear Waste in America, by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, 1986).

Institutional control could well be lost over such long time periods. Failed containers could release catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity directly into the surface environment, to blow downwind, flow downstream, bioconcentrate up the food chain, and harm people down the generations. This would of course be a LARGE impact (even an EXTRA LARGE impact, as a representative from the Nuclear Issues Study Group in Albuquerque, NM, put it at the June 23, 2020 public comment webinar/call-in session re: Holtec's CISF DEIS), that should be acknowledged in this ISP/WCS CISF DEIS.

NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane attached a note to her vote on the Continued Storage Rule and GEIS, warning that loss of institutional control will remain an ongoing risk. How true. The risk will only increase over time.

This is made all the worse by the bait and switch the NRC has pulled on the American people, yet again. In its Continued Storage Rule and GEIS, NRC expressed "nuclear waste confidence" (the previous name for the Continued Storage Rule was, after all, the Nuclear Waste Confidence Rule), whether long-term storage took place on-site at reactors, or away-from-reactor, as at a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility such as Holtec/ELEA's in NM, and/or ISP/WCS's in TX. (NRC changed the name, from Nuclear Waste Confidence, to Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel, after critics dubbed it a Nuclear Waste Confidence Game, or Con Game.)

But NRC's nuclear waste confidence was based on such things as the assumption of the presence of Dry Transfer Systems (DTS), needed in order to safely repackage failing or failed containers, while also protecting worker and public health, and the environment. But NRC has not required a DTS at either the Holtec/ELEA CISF in NM, nor at the ISP/WCS CISF in TX. Holtec, ISP, and NRC have all indicated such a DTS could be built and operated later, as needed, perhaps many decades into the future, post CISF-opening.

Of course, this does not account for the need for a DTS in real time, in an emergency. A DTS would very likely take a long period of time to build, at huge expense. This could not be done in a hurry. But a high-level radioactive waste emergency could unfold in a hurry, such as a leaking, damaged, or otherwise failing or failed container showing up at either the Holtec/ELEA CISF in NM, and/or the ISP/WCS CISF in TX.

Holtec and ISP have both responded with a "Start Clean/Stay Clean" policy, that problematic containers will simply be "Returned to Sender." This is patently absurd, in the case of leaking, contaminated, damaged, or otherwise failed or failing containers. Depending on the route of the "Return to Sender" shipment, literally millions of Americans could be put at risk, in multiple states, during the second leg of the nonsensical, and now even more highly dangerous, round-trip. Such a dangerous shipment could easily violate not only NRC regulations, but multiple federal laws.

If the problem shipment happened to have come from Fermi 2 in MI, that would be a 3,000 mile round-trip. If the problem shipment happened to come from Maine Yankee, that would be a 2,300-mile one-way trip, so a 4,600-mile round-trip. (The two CISFs -- Holtec in NM, ISP in TX -- are only 40 miles apart. In a national sense, whether the shipment from the east were bound for the Holtec, or the ISP, CISF, would make very little difference in terms of overall shipping miles. Holtec would be but 40 miles further west is all. And it must be remembered that every single shipment bound for the ISP/WCS CISF would have to pass through NM to get there. Through Eunice, NM, to be precise. After all, as NRC's ISP DEIS reports, the CISF would be but 0.37 miles away from the NM state line.)

Of course, such a problem container could arrive as soon as the Holtec/ELEA CISF, or the ISP/WCS CISF, were to open, and at any time after that. Without an operating DTS, the Holtec/ELEA CISF and the ISP/WCS CISF, would be caught flat-footed, if and when a problem cask were to arrive.

Of course, problems can, and likely will, develop with containers, even if they first arrive at the CISFs in good shape; age-related degradation over long enough periods of time is guaranteed on Planet Earth, subject as it is to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Things fall apart. Entropy wins in the end. Rust never sleeps. Nor other forms of corrosion and degradation, afflicting all aspects of the CISF, from metal to concrete and everything in between.

If a DTS is never built at the Holtec/ELEA CISF, nor at the ISP/WCS CISF, then catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity into the environment are guaranteed, over a long enough time period, due to container failure, combined with inevitable loss of institutional control, as mentioned above. Absent a DTS, NRC's Continued Storage Rule, or Nuclear Waste Confidence, is a nuclear waste con game, perpetrated on the American people. Absence of a DTS just means that loss of institutional control is guaranteed to arrive all that much sooner at the Holtec/ELEA CISF, and at the ISP/WCS CISF.

The 40-year time horizons in NRC's Holtec/ELEA CISF DEIS, and in NRC's ISP/WCS CISF DEIS, are thus inappropriately, arbitrarily, and capriciously short.

Please address your woefully inadequate "hard look" under NEPA, re: this health-, safety-, and environmentally-significant subject matter above.

And please acknowledge your receipt of these comments.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Kay Drey, President, Board of Directors, Beyond Nuclear

and

Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear