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Centralized Storage

With the scientifically unsound proposed Yucca Mountain radioactive waste dump now canceled, the danger of "interim" storage threatens. This means that radioactive waste could be "temporarily" parked in open air lots, vulnerable to accident and attack, while a new repository site is sought.

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Entries by admin (702)

Sunday
Sep132020

Urgent action alert: Organizational sign-on letter, as public comment on NRC's DEIS, opposing Holtec's highly radioactive waste CISF targeting NM; group sign-on deadline Close of Business, Tues., Sept. 22

A request was made that a group sign on letter be circulated so that organizations could, by signing on, provide comments in that way to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) re: its Holtec International/Eddy Lea Energy Alliance consolidated interim storage facility Draft Environmental Impact Statement. Karen Hadden of SEED Coalition in Texas volunteered to draft the group sign on letter (thanks Karen!), based on work already done by Nuclear Issues Study Group in New Mexico, with their permission and go-ahead (thanks NISG!). Diane D'Arrigo of NIRS and myself did some minor editing (thanks Dee!), and the resultant group sign on letter is below.
We hope your organization will sign on. To sign your group on, simply email me back at <kevin@beyondnuclear.org> with the following information:

Person's Name
Person's Title (if applicable)
Organization Name
City, State
Email Address

I'll compile the list of groups signed on, and will be sure to submit it to NRC by the deadline (Tues., Sept. 22, 2020, 11:59pm Eastern). The deadline for you to sign your organization on to this coalition letter/comment is close of business (5:00pm Eastern) on Sept. 22nd.
Please consider signing your group on, and please spread this alert to your networks. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear & Don't Waste Michigan
P.S. This group sign on letter/comment is for organizations only. However, if you would like to submit comments as an individual, here are links where you can send in webforms, as an individual, prepared by NIRS and SEED Coalition:
GROUP SIGN ON LETTER/COMMENT

Submitted via: <Holtec-CISFEIS@nrc.gov>
Subject: Docket ID NRC-2018-0052, Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Public Comment 
Dear NRC Commissioners and Staff, 
This public comment is in response to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Docket ID NRC-2018-0052) regarding Holtec International’s application for a license to build and operate a “Consolidated Interim Storage Facility [CISF] for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High Level Waste” (NUREG-2237).
The undersigned organizations oppose Holtec’s proposal and ask that the NRC halt its licensing in order to protect public health and safety, the environment and our economy. It appears from the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and other license application documents that there would be no dry cask transfer facility (Dry Transfer System, DTS) at the proposed site, which means there would be no way to repackage waste. The site is not designed for long term disposal, but a dangerous de facto permanent site could result if waste casks or canisters are damaged or corroded and cannot be moved. Consolidated Interim Storage in Texas is also unacceptable. Our groups support and adopt the comments raised by the Nuclear Issues Study Group based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which are as follows:
1) New Mexico Does Not Consent The motto of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is “Protecting People and the Environment,” yet the NRC’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on the Holtec project does neither. Instead, the NRC’s inadequate Draft EIS puts people, wildlife and precious water resources at significant and potentially, deadly risk by failing to heed the concerns of the community. We join the All Pueblo Council of Governors, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard, more than a dozen county and city governments, the Alliance for Environmental Strategies, the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, the Permian Basin Coalition of Land & Royalty Owners and Operators, the Nuclear Issues Study Group, and the more than 30,000 residents who commented during the NRC's 2018 environmental scoping period in vehemently opposing bringing the nation’s high level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants through our communities to New Mexico.

 

We do not consent to New Mexico becoming a nuclear wasteland for millions of years. 
2) Cumulative Impacts The DEIS is inadequate because it fails to consider cumulative impacts from the damage the nuclear industry has already inflicted on New Mexicans for the past 75 years: uranium mining and milling in the northwest on indigenous Diné and Pueblo lands, including the 1979 Church Rock Disaster; radioactive contamination to Tewa lands and people since the Manhattan Project in the Los Alamos area; fallout on downwinders from the Trinity Test in the Tularosa Basin; the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which has already accidentally released dangerous amounts of radiation and now wants to expand; the URENCO uranium enrichment plant in Eunice; the world’s largest nuclear warhead stockpile on the edge of Albuquerque; and the toxic threat to Albuquerque’s aquifer by the Mixed Waste Landfill. 
Rather than adding 173,600 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste to a state that has already been grossly overburdened, the United States should be directing its resources towards: cleaning up the contamination already present in New Mexico communities; just compensation; and holistic community health studies. The DEIS also fails to account for cumulative impacts from the other proposal for Consolidated Interim Storage, approximately forty miles east at the current Waste Control Specialists low-level radioactive waste dump in Andrews County, Texas, very near Eunice, New Mexico.
3) Environmental Racism It’s no coincidence that the United States wants to make New Mexico a nuclear wasteland. It ranks as one of the poorest states and is a majority minority state, with more Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) residents than white residents. For the NRC to determine that nuclear waste which will threaten life for millions of years would have “small” or “no environmental impact” is a blatant violation of environmental justice principles and is environmental racism in action. We do not give our own government license to allow a private industry to further contaminate New Mexicans' home or to expand the massive nuclear burden New Mexicans already bear. 
4) Threats to Cultural Properties & Historic Sites Holtec International and the NRC would have us believe that the site is a desolate, uninhabited place with “no historic value or significance.” This statement is completely false and without merit. The site is located near or on two lagunas or playa lakes: Laguna Gatuna and Laguna Plata. Laguna Plata is an archaeological district that has been extensively studied for decades. Two sites near Laguna Gatuna, where the nuclear waste is proposed to be stored, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Archaeologists have found a plethora of evidence of the Jornada Mogollon people, dating from 200 AD, 700 AD, and 1200 AD. More than 200 archeological sites are located within six miles of the proposed nuclear waste dump. Laguna Gatuna, while often dry, fills with water after monsoon rains, attracting a variety of wildlife and hunters for millenia. The Hopi and Mescalero Apache nations have identified the area as culturally significant to them, and the Hopi nation has informed the NRC that traditional cultural properties could be adversely affected if this project proceeds. The site where Holtec wants to dump tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste has profound historic value and significance.
5) Threats to Water & Wildlife The impact of this forever deadly nuclear waste would have devastating consequences on wildlife including threatened species that rely on the lagunas for drinking water and the surrounding area as a critical habitat, including the Lesser Prairie Chicken, and the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard. Agencies such as U.S. Fish & Wildlife, New Mexico Game & Fish, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) have all gone on record attesting to the significance of Laguna Gatuna for migratory birds, and have argued that it should be designated permanently as a Water of the United States (WOTUS), which would make it eligible for protection under the Clean Water Act. 
6) Threats from Transporting Irradiated Nuclear Fuel  Not only New Mexico would be adversely impacted by the Holtec project: all communities along the transportation routes between nuclear power plants and Holtec's proposed CISF site would be threatened by radiation from the rail cars, and from the devastating financial and environmental damage if an accident or act of malice should occur. Studies have shown that one accident is likely to occur for every 10,000 shipments. It is irresponsible and dangerous for NRC to avoid adequate inclusion (a "hard look," as legally required by the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA) of these mammoth risks and liabilities in its DEIS for Holtec’s application. 

7) Holtec’s Project is Illegal Finally, under current U.S. law, this project is illegal. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, does not allow the federal government to take title to the high-level radioactive waste (commercial irradiated nuclear fuel) until a permanent geologic repository is operating. So the federal government cannot pay for transportation and storage of the waste as Holtec wants. Legally, the license cannot be issued until a permanent repository is operating. 

For all the above reasons and more, we declare that the DEIS for Holtec’s application is inadequate and further that the license for a high-level radioactive waste storage facility should be denied. In conclusion, high-level nuclear waste from nuclear power plants around the U.S. should not be brought to New Mexico – it should be isolated on or near the current nuclear power plant site, in Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS), until there is an environmentally just and scientifically sound option available.
Sincerely,

*Signatory Groups To Be Listed Here*

Saturday
Sep122020

Beyond Nuclear's 25th set of public comments, re: Docket ID NRC-2018-0052, re: NRC's Holtec/ELEA CISF DEIS

Submitted via <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov>

Dear Holtec-CISFEIS Resource and NRC Staff,

This is my 25th set of public comments in this proceeding.

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

Due especially to the numerous problems I have experienced submitting public comments via this <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov> email address, please acknowledge receipt of these comments, and please provide me with confirmation of their proper placement in the official public record for this proceeding.

The following subject matter, re: Holtec's corporate character and integrity (or, more precisely, the lack thereof) has gotten little to no attention in NRC's Holtec CISF DEIS, a far cry from NEPA's legally binding "hard look" requirement. How can NRC approve this license application, entrusting the handling, transport, and storage of up to 173,600 metric tons of forever hazardous highly radioactive waste, to a company as crooked, untrustworthy, and even criminal as Holtec?

Following are two annotated bibliographies. The first focuses on Holtec International itself. The second focuses on SNC-Lavalin, Holtec's consortium partner in nuclear power plant decommissioning and irradiated nuclear fuel management. It is the latter subject matter that makes Holtec's partnership with SNC-Lavalin relevant to this CISF DEIS. If Holtec and SNC-Lavalin are partners in managing irradiated nuclear fuel storage on-site at decommissioning nuclear power plants, then this is directly relevant to that irradiated nuclear fuel's at-reactor on-site storage and handling in preparation for transport to the CISF in NM. The condition of the irradiated nuclear fuel itself, as well as the containers it is stored/transported in, could suffer, dangerously so, in the hands of companies as prone to incompetent mismanagement, or even malicious corner cutting and lawlessness, as Holtec and SNC-Lavalin.

As but one example, Holtec's "Start Clean/Stay Clean"-"Return to Sender" policy of returning problem containers to the nuclear power plant site where they originated, means that where Holtec and SNC-Lavalin are in charge of decommissioning and high-level radioactive waste management -- such as at Oyster Creek NJ and Pilgrim MA already, and as proposed at Indian Point NY as well as Palisades and Big Rock Point MI -- the two companies would then be in charge of transporting the problem containers back, and then receiving them for likely emergency handling and continued storage at the nuclear power plant sites. That is why the "Skeletons in SNC-Lavalin's Closet" annotated bibliography is included as well, under Holtec's own, below. Holtec's judgment is clearly suspect, partnering with a company like SNC-Lavalin. But the same can be said about SNC-Lavalin, for partnering with a company as crooked as Holtec. Neither company can be trusted to properly manage any amount of forever deadly irradiated nuclear fuel, let alone 173,600 metric tons worth (still nearly twice the amount that currently exists in the United States). In a very real and frightening sense, Holtec and SNC-Lavalin could become partners in crime.

And another example is bribery. While Holtec's and its CEO Krishna Singh's serial bribery schemes are serious enough, in a certain sense they pale in comparison to SNC-Lavalin's bribery schemes. Whereas Holtec and its CEO Krishna Singh were implicated in a $55,000 bribe at TVA's Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Alabama, a crime which got Holtec barred from doing business with TVA for 60 days, and fined $2 million, SNC-Lavalin executive Sami Bebawi was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison after being convicted of various fraud and corruption charges. SNC-Lavalin was fined $280 million for its fraud and corruption. And SNC-Lavalin's bribery, kick back, and embezzlement schemes involved not millions, not tens of millions, but sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. Such criminality earned SNC-Lavalin an unprecedented decade-long debarment from doing any business with the international World Bank affiliated network, as stated in this April 17, 2013 press release <https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2013/04/17/world-bank-debars-snc-lavalin-inc-and-its-affiliates-for-ten-years>:

“The World Bank Group today announced the debarment of SNC-Lavalin Inc. - in addition to over 100 affiliates - for a period of 10 years following the company’s misconduct in relation to the Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project in Bangladesh, as well as misconduct under another Bank-financed project.”  SNC-Lavalin Inc. is a subsidiary of SNC-Lavalin Group.

In fact, the scandals swirling around SNC-Lavalin nearly toppled the Canadian prime minister, as documented below. The inclusion of SNC-Lavalin related documentation is therefore justified in this public comment, considering the questions it raises about Holtec's integrity and character to partner with such a firm, but also because SNC-Lavalin will directly or indirectly be involved with irradiated nuclear fuel storage, transport, handling, and other management activities, back and forth from nuclear power plant sites and the Holtec CISF in NM.

Incredibly enough, racketeering charges have recently been brought forward by U.S. Attorneys, against nuclear power firms and elected officials in Ohio and/or Illinois, and fraud and conspiracy charges have been brought against nuclear power executives in South Carolina. Such racketeering in illegal schemes by Holtec and SNC-Lavalin is not only a possibility, it is a likelihood, judging by both companies' past behavior, as documented in the annotated bibliographies below. NRC should not be a complicit party in such potential RICO violations, as by rubber-stamping the Holtec CISF license. It is mind boggling that NRC is even considering approving Holtec's proposal to acquire ownership of, and/or take over management of, up to 173,600 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel, given its documented track record.

Both Holtec and SNC-Lavalin have engaged in serious criminality and other malicious behaviors. How can NRC trust a word either Holtec or SNC-Lavalin say, including in the Holtec CISF license application, such as the Environmental Report, upon which the NRC DEIS is based in the first place? For this reason of lack of corporate character and integrity, under the laws and regulations NRC is mandated to carry out and enforce, to protect public health, safety, the environment, and the common defense, NRC should not approve Holtec's CISF license application. A genuine "hard look" by NRC under NEPA would have reached this conclusion. As one of the news article headlines below puts it, Holtec is "too radioactive" to be trusted with the authority to carry out such high risk highly radioactive waste activities.

References:

Holtec's Radioactive Skeletons in the Closet;

SNC-Lavalin's Skeletons in the Closet.

Friday
Sep112020

NRC Board Again Rejects Oil Groups’ Hearing Petition for New Mexico Used Fuel Site

As reported by ExchangeMonitor.

The article is behind a pay wall, but free temporary subscriptions are available.

Thursday
Sep102020

Beyond Nuclear's 24th set of public comments, re: Docket ID NRC-2018-0052, NRC's Holtec/ELEA CISF DEIS --re: Why Are These CISF Risks Being Taken? To Offload High-Level Radioactive Wastes' title (ownership) and liability on the backs of the public taxpayer

24th set; submitted Sept. 10th; re: Why Are These CISF Risks Being Taken? To Offload High-Level Radioactive Wastes' title (ownership) and liability on the backs of the public taxpayer.

Submitted via <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov>

Dear Holtec-CISFEIS Resource and NRC Staff,

This is my 24th set of public comments in this proceeding.

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

Due especially to the numerous problems I have experienced submitting public comments via this <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov> email address, please acknowledge receipt of these comments, and please provide me with confirmation of their proper placement in the official public record for this proceeding.

The following subject matter has gotten little to no attention in NRC's Holtec CISF DEIS, a far cry from NEPA's legally binding "hard look" requirement. In addition, these comments show that there is no legitimate nor reasonable purpose and need for the Holtec CISF, targeting New Mexico, in the first place.

 

Why Are These CISF Risks Being Taken?

As laid out by my previous comments submitted in this proceeding, there are many significant risks associated with Holtec's proposed CISF. So why are these CISF risks to be taken? For no good reason. Certainly not to increase public health, safety, security, or environmental protection, despite Holtec, Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, and nuclear power industry claims and PR spin to the contrary. Truth be told, it’s to expedite or accelerate the transfer title, liability, costs, and risks, for the highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel, from the private commercial companies that generated it, and profited from its generation, onto the backs of federal taxpayers. That’s a pretty big favor to the companies – in fact, it’s unique in all of industry! And it happens to be illegal. It is a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended.

Dr. Mark Cooper of Vermont Law School calculated, in December 2013, in his expert witness comments to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Nuclear Waste Confidence/Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Generic EIS proceeding, calculated that the first 200 years of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel storage will cost a "staggering" $210 to 350 billion (yes, with a B). (See his expert comments at < https://web.archive.org/web/20160909042541/http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/exhibitd2013-12-16markcooperfinaldeclaration.pdf>, as well as the related press release at < http://www.cleanenergy.org/2013/12/19/waste-disposal-nrc/>. I have also attached Cooper's testimony to this email.) His estimate assumed two centralized (or consolidated) interim storage sites (or facilities), one permanent disposal geologic repository, and ongoing on-site storage at nuclear power plants, as needed. It effectively doubled the costs of nuclear-generated electricity, in one fell swoop, because these particular irradiated nuclear fuel management costs had conveniently (for the nuclear power industry) previously never been accounted for. Thus, the consolidated interim storage facility, as at Holtec/ELEA's Laguna Gatuna site, would be yet another significant public subsidy, for the nuclear power industry, on top of more than a half-century of other significant public subsidies of various and numerous sorts. (See the Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2011 report < http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power/nuclear-power-subsidies-report#.WK3Iz4WkUZU>, for a comprehensive overview of the many assorted, numerous, some of them unique and unmatched by any other industry, public subsidies the nuclear power industry has enjoyed over the past many decades.) It is worth noting that none of this public subsidization of the nuclear power industry is included in the NRC's DEIS, such as in the socio-economic impacts sections, or anywhere else, for that matter.

At NRC public comment meetings in NM and TX in mid-Feb. 2017, re: the Interim Storage Partners CISF, WCS (Waste Control Specialists) CEO Rod Baltzer pushed back against such criticisms. He said that the taxpayer is already obligated to pay for irradiated nuclear fuel storage, because DOE signed contracts with utilities in the 1980s, pledging to begin taking out the garbage beginning by Jan. 31, 1998. He pointed out that the utilities have sued DOE for partial breach of contract, and won damages from the U.S. Judgment Fund, which draws taxpayer funding from the U.S. Treasury, not ratepayer funding from the Nuclear Waste Fund.

Baltzer is right on this one point: U.S. taxpayers are hemorrhaging $500 million to $800 million per year in these partial breach of contract damage awards, as Beyond Nuclear reported way back in 2010 < http://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/NewWasteDisposalContractsBackgrounderFINAL3.pdf>.

(Baltzer now works in a leadership position at Deep Isolation, Inc. Holtec CEO Krishna Singh, at his Holtec CISF license application unveiling press conference held on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in early April 2017, said that he regards the ISP CISF, proposed at WCS, TX, just 39 miles from the Holtec CISF site, as complementary, not as a competitor.)

But our criticism actually still holds. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, the nuclear utilities are responsible for interim storage of irradiated nuclear fuel. Taxpayers are responsible, most unfortunately, only for final disposal. But obviously now, the nuclear power utilities would like to transfer even consolidated interim storage facility expenses onto the backs of U.S. taxpayers, ASAP, as with DOE taking title and liability for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel bound for, and stored at, CISFs, such as Holtec/ELEA's in NM, and ISP's at WCS, TX.

This simple fact formed the basis for an environmental coalition letter to NRC in Oct. 2016, pointing out that the WCS license application is illegal, and that the agency should cease and desist from processing it. (For additional information, see:

http://archive.beyondnuclear.org/centralized-storage/2016/10/26/despite-setbacks-beyond-nuclear-and-allies-continue-to-chall.html )

Even though that letter focused on ISP/WCS in TX, the same legal principles and arguments also apply at Holtec/ELEA's CISF in NM, as Beyond Nuclear and other groups have raised at every turn, such as during NRC's Holtec CISF environmental scoping public comment period, during the NRC ASLB Holtec CISF licensing proceeding, in letters and legal appeals to the NRC Commissioners, and now during this NRC Holtec CISF DEIS public comment period.

Current law requires a final disposal repository to be licensed, open and operating (not just proposed, nor even nearing being granted a license), before a centralized (consolidated) interim storage site (facility) can be opened, that would rely upon the federal DOE to pay all the expenses -- in effect, taking title to, and liability for, commercial irradiated nuclear fuel interim storage. But there is no licensed repository open and operating. There is no prospect for one for another 28 years, if not significantly longer. So this Holtec CISF proposal violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended.

Holtec is seeking an end run around this legal constraint. This is very risky for the U.S. federal taxpayer. The linkage between an operating final disposal repository, and a centralized interim storage site, in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, is to guard against consolidated interim storage facilities from becoming de facto permanent, surface storage parking lot dumps -- the costs, liabilities and risks of which, the U.S. federal taxpayer may get stuck with indefinitely.

This end run around the legally mandated, precautionary linkage between a licensed and open/operating repository, and centralized interim storage facilities, that Holtec seeks, would be a huge boon to the nuclear power industry. It would expedite the transfer of all costs, risks, and liabilities for irradiated nuclear fuel, from the utilities that profited from its generation, onto the backs of U.S. federal taxpayers, sooner rather than later -- even before a repository is licensed, open and operating. Long before, actually: the DOE’s most recent estimate, as to when a repository can be opened, is 2048! And, as laid out in comments I've previously submitted in this proceeding, even that 2048 date may be overly optimistic.

Such an accelerated transfer of title for, and the costs, risks, and liabilities for, commercial irradiated nuclear fuel, means the nuclear utilities can walk away from the mess they’ve made all the sooner, removing that headache from their own ledgers. This would be yet another lucrative public subsidy for the nuclear power industry, this one paid by the U.S. taxpayer.

Holtec is clear about those costs, risks, and liabilities. In its initial license application, Holtec was careful, making it a licensing condition, that all those costs, risks, and liabilities for the commercial irradiated nuclear fuel, would be solely on DOE – that is, on U.S. federal taxpayers. Holtec would not accept any of those costs, risks, or liabilities. This of course set up a moral hazard with a highly radioactive twist. Holtec, a private, for-profit company, would have every incentive to cut corners, and take short cuts on safety and environmental protection, in order to save money, and boost its own profits. After all, DOE – U.S. federal taxpayers – would be shouldering all costs, risks, and liabilities. If anything were to go wrong, it would not be Holtec’s problem – it would be the taxpayers’ problem!

Only when Beyond Nuclear, and other groups, challenged this in Holtec's NRC ASLB licensing proceeding, and during the NRC environmental scoping for this CISF, did Holtec change its application, adding <and/or licensee title holders>, in addition to DOE, as potential customers at the CISF. Beyond Nuclear, and other groups, such as Don't Waste Michigan et al. (a seven group, national grassroots environmental coalition), and Sierra Club (the oldest, and largest, environmental group in the country), continued to press their point, however, throughout the ASLB licensing proceeding, as well as on appeal to the NRC Commissioners. Now that not only the ASLB, but also the NRC Commissioners, have rejected all such interventions and appeals, the Holtec CISF opponents have appealed to the federal courts. A common argument, made by Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan et al., Sierra Club, and other Holtec CISF opponents, even at the current U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit level (the second highest court in the land), is that DOE's role as effective title holder (notwithstanding <and/or licensee title holders> as a fig leaf and afterthought to the contrary) makes this proposed CISF by Holtec illegal, a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended. And, as Beyond Nuclear has argued for years, NRC cannot violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, without also violating the Administrative Procedure Act.

Here is Beyond Nuclear's press release, with links to certain cited legal documents, announcing its federal court appeal against Holtec's CISF, focused on this particular illegality subject matter:

http://archive.beyondnuclear.org/centralized-storage/2020/6/4/beyond-nuclear-files-federal-lawsuit-challenging-high-level.html

Here is the press release, reproduced in full:

BEYOND NUCLEAR FILES FEDERAL LAWSUIT CHALLENGING HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DUMP FOR ENTIRE INVENTORY OF U.S. “SPENT” REACTOR FUEL

Source:  Beyond Nuclear http://www.beyondnuclear.org/

NEWS FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR

For immediate release

Contact:

Diane Curran, Harmon, Curran, Spielberg + Eisenberg, LLP, (240) 393-9285, dcurran@harmoncurran.com 

Mindy Goldstein, Director, Turner Environmental Law Clinic, Emory University School of Law, (404) 727-3432, mindy.goldstein@emory.edu 

Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear, (240) 462-3216, kevin@beyondnuclear.org 

Stephen Kent, KentCom LLC, (914) 589 5988, skent@kentcom.com


BEYOND NUCLEAR FILES FEDERAL LAWSUIT CHALLENGING HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DUMP FOR ENTIRE INVENTORY OF U.S. “SPENT” REACTOR FUEL   

Petitioner charges the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knowingly violated U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Act and up-ended settled law prohibiting transfer of ownership of spent fuel to the federal government until a permanent underground repository is ready to receive it

[WASHINGTON, DC – June 4, 2020] -- Today the non-profit organization Beyond Nuclear filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit requesting review of an  April 23, 2020 order and an October 29, 2018 order by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), rejecting challenges to Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance’s application to build a massive “consolidated interim storage facility” (CISF) for nuclear waste in southeastern New Mexico. Holtec proposes to store as much as 173,000 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated or “spent” nuclear fuel – more than twice the amount of spent fuel currently stored at U.S. nuclear power reactors – in shallowly buried containers on the site.   

But according to Beyond Nuclear’s petition, the NRC’s orders “violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act  by refusing to dismiss an administrative proceeding that contemplated issuance of a license permitting federal ownership of used reactor fuel at a commercial fuel storage facility.”

Since it contemplates that the federal government would become the owner of the spent fuel during transportation to and storage at its CISF, Holtec’s license application should have been dismissed at the outset, Beyond Nuclear’s appeal argues. Holtec has made no secret of the fact that it expects the federal government will take title to the waste, which would clear the way for it to be stored at its CISF, and this is indeed the point of building the facility. But that would directly violate the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), which prohibits federal government ownership of spent fuel unless and until a permanent underground repository is up and running.  No such repository has been licensed in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) most recent estimate for the opening of a geologic repository is the year 2048 at the earliest.

In its April 23 decision, in which the NRC rejected challenges to the license application, the four NRC Commissioners admitted that the NWPA would indeed be violated if title to spent fuel were transferred to the federal government so it could be stored at the Holtec facility.  But they refused to remove the license provision in the application which contemplates federal ownership of the spent fuel. Instead, they ruled that approving Holtec’s application in itself would not involve NRC in a violation of federal law, and that therefore they could go forward with approving the application, despite its illegal provision. According to the NRC’s decision, “the license itself would not violate the NWPA by transferring the title to the fuel, nor would it authorize Holtec or [the U.S. Department of Energy] to enter into storage contracts.” (page 7). The NRC Commissioners also noted with approval that “Holtec hopes that Congress will amend the law in the future.” (page 7).

“This NRC decision flagrantly violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits an agency from acting contrary to the law as issued by Congress and signed by the President,” said Mindy Goldstein, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear. “The Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that it may issue a license with an illegal provision, in the hopes that Holtec or the Department of Energy won’t complete the illegal activity it authorized. The buck must stop with the NRC.”   

“Our claim is simple,” said attorney Diane Curran, another member of Beyond Nuclear’s legal team. “The NRC is not above the law, nor does it stand apart from it.”

According to a 1996 D.C. Circuit Court ruling, the NWPA is Congress’ “comprehensive scheme for the interim storage and permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste generated by civilian nuclear power plants” [Ind. Mich. Power Co. v. DOE, 88 F.3d 1272, 1273 (D.C. Cir. 1996)]. The law establishes distinct roles for the federal government vs. the owners of facilities that generate spent fuel with respect to the storage and disposal of spent fuel. The “Federal Government has the responsibility to provide for the permanent disposal of … spent nuclear fuel” but “the generators and owners of … spent nuclear fuel have the primary responsibility to provide for, and the responsibility to pay the costs of, the interim storage of … spent fuel until such … spent fuel is accepted by the Secretary of Energy” [42 U.S.C. § 10131]. Section 111 of the NWPA specifically provides that the federal government will not take title to spent fuel until it has opened a repository [42 U.S.C. § 10131(a)(5)].  

“When Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and refused to allow nuclear reactor licensees to transfer ownership of their irradiated reactor fuel to the DOE until a permanent repository was up and running, it acted wisely,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear. “It understood that spent fuel remains hazardous for millions of years, and that the only safe long-term strategy for safeguarding irradiated reactor fuel is to place it in a permanent repository for deep geologic isolation from the living environment. Today, the NWPA remains the public’s best protection against a so-called ‘interim’ storage facility becoming a de facto permanent, national, surface dump for radioactive waste. But if we ignore it or jettison the law, communities like southeastern New Mexico can be railroaded by the nuclear industry and its friends in government, and forced to accept mountains of forever deadly high-level radioactive waste other states are eager to offload.”

In addition to impacting New Mexico, shipping the waste to the CISF site would also endanger 43 other states plus the District of Columbia, because it would entail hauling 10,000 high risk, high-level radioactive waste shipments on their roads, rails, and waterways, posing risks of radioactive release all along the way.

Besides threatening public health and safety, evading federal law to license CISF facilities would also impact the public financially. Transferring  title and liability for spent fuel from the nuclear utilities that generated it to DOE would mean that federal taxpayers would have to pay for its so-called "interim" storage, to the tune of many billions of dollars.  That’s on top of the many billions ratepayers and taxpayers have already paid to fund a permanent geologic repository that hasn’t yet materialized. 

But that’s not to say that Yucca Mountain would be an acceptable alternative to CISF. “A deep geologic repository for permanent disposal should meet a long list of stringent criteria: legality, environmental justice, consent-based siting, scientific suitability, mitigation of transport risks, regional equity, intergenerational equity, and safeguards against nuclear weapons proliferation, including a ban on spent fuel reprocessing,” Kamps said. “But the Yucca Mountain dump, which is targeted at land owned by the  Western Shoshone in Nevada, fails to meet any of those standards.  That’s why a coalition of more than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, and public interest organizations, representing all 50 states, has opposed it for 33 years."

Kamps noted that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has upheld the NWPA before, including in the matter of inadequate standards for Yucca Mountain.  In its landmark 2004 decision in Nuclear Energy Institute v. Environmental Protection Agency, it wrote, “Having the capacity to outlast human civilization as we know it and the potential to devastate public health and the environment, nuclear waste has vexed scientists, Congress, and regulatory agencies for the last half-century."  The Court found the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s insufficient 10,000-year standard for Yucca Mountain violated the NWPA’s requirement that the National Academy of Sciences' recommendations must be followed, and ordered the EPA back to the drawing board. In 2008, the EPA issued a revised standard, acknowledging a million-year hazard associated with irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Even that standard falls short, Kamps said, because certain radioactive isotopes in spent fuel remain dangerous for much longer than that.  Iodine-129, for example, is hazardous for 157 million years. 

NOTE TO EDITORS AND PRODUCERS:  Sources quoted in this release are available for comment.  For a copy of the petition filed today, to arrange interviews or for other information, please contact Stephen Kent, skent@kentcom.com, 914-589-5988

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Beyond Nuclear is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization. Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear. Beyond Nuclear: 7304 Carroll Avenue, #182, Takoma Park, MD 20912. Info@beyondnuclear.org. www.beyondnuclear.org.
Wednesday
Sep092020

Beyond Nuclear's 23rd set of public comments, re: Docket ID NRC-2018-0052, NRC's Holtec/ELEA CISF DEIS -- Stringent Criteria for a Highly Radioactive Waste Geologic Repository; 1,000+ organizations opposed to the Yucca dump targeted at Western Shoshone land in NV

Submitted via: <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov>

Dear Holtec-CISFEIS Resource and NRC Staff,

This is my 23rd set of public comments in this proceeding.

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

Due especially to the numerous problems I have experienced submitting public comments via this <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov> email address, please acknowledge receipt of these comments, and their proper placement in the official public record for this proceeding.

The following subject matter has gotten little to no attention in NRC's Holtec CISF DEIS, a far cry from NEPA's legally binding "hard look" requirement.

Please take into consideration the list of "Stringent Criteria for a Highly Radioactive Waste Geologic Repository," which I prepared several months ago, below. In order to legitimately open a safe, sound, publicly accepted permanent geologic repository, one that is protective of health, safety, and the environment, DOE will need to identify a location that meets all of these stringent criteria, and, as mentioned at the end, perhaps others yet to be identified.
Actually, not DOE -- but a replacement agency or institution. For, just as consent-based siting was listed as a top final recommendation by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future Final Report in Jan., 2012, so too was replacement of DOE in this role, as DOE has garnered so much public distrust over these and related matters, that the damage to trust is permanent and irreparable, and DOE must be replaced. (Of course, much the same could be said of NRC, as well.)
I provide this listing, as promised in earlier comments I've submitted in this proceeding, in order to show that the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada dump-site violates many, to most, to all of these criteria. But not only should Yucca Mountain be removed from any further consideration for a permanent dump-site, it will be removed. Why? Because the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, the State of Nevada, and more than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, social justice, and public interest organizations, representing many millions of American members, demand it, just as they have for 33 years and counting, ever since passage of the infamous "Screw Nevada" Act of 1987, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987, which singled out Yucca Mountain as the only site in the country for further consideration as a permanent repository. Beneath the following "Stringent Criteria" listing, I have also included a partial listing of the 1,000-group+ environmental, justice, and public interest coalition, representing every state, that is adamantly opposed to the Yucca dump.

Thus, for all of these reasons, Holtec's and NRC's assumption that Yucca Mountain will someday become a permanent repository, is bogus, illegal, erroneous, and improper. Neither Holtec nor NRC can justify calling this proposed CISF "temporary" or "interim." If it is licensed, constructed, and operated, it will certainly become very long-term surface storage, likely indefinite, and perhaps even de facto permanent -- a surface storage/disposal parking lot dump.

Citations:

Stringent Criteria for a Highly Radioactive Waste Geologic Repository;

1,000+ organizations opposed to the Yucca Mountain dump targeted at Western Shoshone Land in Nevada.

Of course, transporting high-risk, high-level radioactive waste once, instead of multiple times, makes good sense. Thus, CISFs make no sense. Irradiated nuclear fuel should be transported only once, from the nuclear power plant sites where it is currently located, to a permanent repository. But that permanent repository must meet all of the stringent criteria listed above. Yucca Mountain cannot do so. Therefore, Holtec and NRC should stop illegally and improperly assuming it will do so. If Holtec and NRC refuse to stop, then Yucca dump opponents -- the Western Shoshone, the State of Nevada, and more than a thousand environmental and public interest groups, representing many millions of people -- will see to it that Holtec and NRC are stopped, just as the adamant resistance to the Yucca dump has stood strong for 33 years, and counting.

So, for the irradiated nuclear fuel that already exists, geologic isolation, at a site meeting all the stringent criteria above, is the preferred alternative to Holtec's CISF in NM.

For the irradiated nuclear fuel that does not already exist, the preferred alternative to Holtec's CISF in NM, is to not generate it in the first place. Dangerously age-degraded reactors should be shut ASAP for safety's sake alone. Proposed new reactors should be cancelled, and no new reactors built in the future. The electricity supply for replacing these shutdown old, and cancelled proposed new, reactors should be provided by energy efficiency and conservation savings in the first place, and any newly or otherwise needed electricity should be provided, instead of by nuclear power, by ever more clean, safe, secure, reliable, and affordable renewable energy, such as by solar and wind power.