NRC Freezes Licensing Decisions

[Jaepheth]

NRC Freezes Licensing Decisions To Consider Waste Options

Posted on August 9th, 2012 by Shelley Welton
by Casey Graetz, Intern

On August 7 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an official memorandum and order to suspend final licensing decisions on new licenses and on license renewals for nuclear power plants. This action by the NRC does not affect the agency’s review of license applications, and only holds up final decisions. The memorandum comes after the June 8th ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the NRC had violated the National Environmental Policy Act in issuing its 2010 update to its Waste Confidence Decision and accompanying Temporary Storage Rule. The court not only found that the NRC’s rules could not guarantee a final waste repository would be ready “when necessary,” but that the NRC had also not properly examined the consequences of storing used nuclear fuel on-site for up to 60 years after a plant’s license had expired.

The court decision resulted in many anti-nuclear groups filing essentially identical petitions that called for the NRC to stop issuing individual plant licenses pending the completion of its action on the remanded Waste Confidence proceeding. These petitions also requested an opportunity for public comment for any generic determinations the NRC might make in either an environmental assessment or impact statement and at least a 60-day period for “any site-specific concerns relating to the remanded proceedings.”

In addressing the demands of these petitions, the August 7 memorandum states that the NRC will not issue any license dependent upon the Waste Confidence Decision or the Temporary Storage Rule. It also made clear that the public will be given an opportunity to comment on any generic waste confidence document that the NRC issues and that litigants will be able to challenge site-specific actions.

The anti-nuclear groups who filed the petitions hailed the action, issuing a statement saying the memorandum will freeze eight plant license renewals, nine applications to build new reactors, an operating license and an early site permit. NRC spokesman said of these licenses that much talked about Entergy Corp. Indian Point power plant in New York is “next in line” for renewal of its license after the NRC addresses the court’s remand.

The NRC has yet to determine whether its action to resolve the waste confidence issue will be generic, site-specific or a combination of the two. According to a spokesman, although there is no timetable for the NRC to take action, the NRC staff is expected to provide options to the commission in the coming weeks.

A setback for a more nuclear, less fossil fueled United States.
If only there were some sort of large, underground, permanent repository for nuclear waste 80 mi (130 km) northwest of the Las Vegas Valley...

[Flagg]

Talk the fucktards who designed Fukishima if you want to yell at someone.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Fukishima was designed just fine. Based on all available geologic records it was outfitted to withstand local earthquakes and tsunamis. The problem was the Sendai quake was almost an entire order of magnitude greater than anything that part of Japan had experienced.

Its like getting mad that a kevlar vest didn't stop a tank round.

[Terralthra]

Fukishima was designed just fine. Based on all available geologic records it was outfitted to withstand local earthquakes and tsunamis. The problem was the Sendai quake was almost an entire order of magnitude greater than anything that part of Japan had experienced.

Its like getting mad that a kevlar vest didn't stop a tank round.

Not exactly. The backup generators were moved from the top floor (where they would've been protected from flood damage) to the bottom floor (not so much). In an area which could be reasonably predicted to encounter tsunami...yeah. Not the best design change.

[Sea Skimmer]

Actually the generators survived both quake and tsunami, at least for a while, what did not survive was the main fuel tanks located above ground behind the seawall. The generators failed once the local buffer tanks went dry which was very quick. Generators on a high floor would be exposed to much greater accelerations from earthquakes, this was the reason to place them in the basement in the first place. Another problem was that while the US standard is four generators, and normally one is elevated in areas that could flood, Japan never moved past having two collocated units per reactor. Which goes back to the real problem, as concluded by Japans own government in a recent report, that the original reactor design was not the root cause as bad as it might be, the problem was Japans management culture, which among other things allowed the nuclear industry to set its own standards, ignore its own standards, and comprehensively block efforts to upgrade the plants. Several upgrades that could have seriously reduced the scale of the accident were not implemented while being standard as US plants, in some cases for decades. That same management culture and general retardation of the way Japan is run is also blamed for why after the quake hit the situation was dealt with so poorly, particularly the refusal of TEPCO to either vent gas or flood the reactors until they were already blowing up and it no longer mattered.

But none of this is at all relevant to the current event, at all. Challenges to license renewal at Indian Point predate Fukushima by years. What is at issue is the lack of long term storage for spent nuclear fuel which no longer requires active cooling of any form. This stuff simply cannot cause a nuclear disaster while sitting in its dry casks, but it is still toxic waste. The US comically now has demolished nuclear plants which still have the dry casks on site, due to lack of any other allowed spot to put them. In fact its already so hard to even put fuel in dry casks we actually are inviting a higher disaster risk, by keeping so much fuel in spent fuel pools unnecessarily when it could interact with hot fuel. But opposition to nuclear power has never been based on logic, nor have safety standards ever been equally applied. If anything like what nuclear plants are expected to do was applied to coal power the entire industry would be stopped immediately. Instead it is allowed to kill thousands of people per year as part of normal approved operations. And best of all we have wounderful nations like Germany deliberately increasing coal power production to avoid using nukes. In the US coal power is going down, but only because fracking natural gas is legal, even though it involves dumping radioactive waste into sewer systems (ignoring whatever leakage problems exist in the fields themselves, which at least on paper can be mitigated and are at least, not deliberate)

Fukishima was designed just fine. Based on all available geologic records it was outfitted to withstand local earthquakes and tsunamis. The problem was the Sendai quake was almost an entire order of magnitude greater than anything that part of Japan had experienced.

Its like getting mad that a kevlar vest didn't stop a tank round.

That's wrong, they had clear proof of an tsunami, including in fact dozens of carved stone markers made by people warning not to live close to the ocean, of the same scale about 1000 years before, this information was known but excluded from design calculations in favor of a 100 year standard.