Bob Audette reports that the five-member board that oversees the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday voted to end a two-year moratorium on issuing new power plant licenses. The moratorium was in response to a June 2012 decision issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that ordered the NRC to consider the possibility that the federal government may never take possession of the nearly 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at power plant sites scattered around the country. In addition to lifting the moratorium, the five-member board also approved guidance replacing the Waste Confidence Rule. The previous Waste Confidence Rule determined that spent fuel could be safely stored on site for at least 60 years after a plant permanently ceased operations.
In the new standard, Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Rule, NRC staff members reassessed three time frames for the storage of spent fuel - 60 years, 100 years and indefinitely. The completion of this rule-making is an important step that will facilitate final decisions on industry licensing actions pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Industry supports the commission decision to continue its long-standing and court-sanctioned practice of considering long-term used fuel storage issues generically. Issuance of this rule will maximize efficiency in the licensing and relicensing processes while ensuring the agency complies with the requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act to disclose the environmental impacts of used fuel storage. The Waste Confidence Rule had been the NRC generic determination regarding the environmental impacts of storing spent nuclear fuel beyond the licensed life for operation of a nuclear power plant.
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