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Nuclear power plant approvals delayed by US govt shutdown?

“The shutdown of the government is an indication that it can’t be trusted to have institutional controls over radioactive materials for as long as they remain dangerous,” D’Arrigo said. “It seems incredible to me that the NRC is seriously talking about being able to afford and have institutional controls indefinitely.”

SHUTDOWN MAY FURTHER DELAY NUCLEAR POWER PLANT APPROVALS By Douglas P. Guarino, 3 Oct 13 Global Security Newswire Nuclear power plant licensing decisions — already delayed by a 2012 court ruling — could be pushed back further by the federal government shutdown, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said this week.

If Congress does not approve funding to run the federal government by Friday, the NRC likely will have to reschedule a series of meetings that kicked off this week on a proposed new “waste confidence” rule that is meant to address the ruling, Keith McConnell, head of the NRC waste confidence directorate, said Tuesday.

Most of the federal government shut down on Oct. 1, the start of fiscal 2014, because Democrats and Republicans in Congress cannot agree on a temporary funding bill. Democrats are rejecting GOP attempts include in the budget a repeal of the health-care reform law Congress approved in 2010.

Last year, a federal appeals court sided with the states of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, which argued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrongly assumed spent reactor fuel eventually would move to a permanent waste repository, even though the Obama administration canceled the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada.

The court ruled in New York v. NRC that the commission must examine the potential consequences of fires in spent fuel pools — where much of the waste currently is stored. Critics have argued the pools are vulnerable to terrorist attacks given that they are located outside reactors’ containment structures, and in some cases in an elevated area they claim is more susceptible to air attacks.

In response to the ruling, the commission on Sept. 13 proposed a new “waste confidence” rule that it claims addresses the court’s concerns. Between now and Nov. 27, NRC staff planned to collect public comments on the new proposal, including by hosting a series of public meetings throughout the country…….
As it is, the commission has already directed its staff not to issue any final decisions pertaining to the relicensing of existing plants or approval of proposed new facilities until the waste-confidence issue is resolved. License reviews could continue up until the point of making a final decision under that order, but if the government shutdown extends beyond Friday, even that work could come to a halt, NRC spokesman David McIntyre told GSN Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the commission’s approach to addressing the 2012 court ruling is under fire. In May, the same group of states that prevailed in the case filed a petition with the commission arguing that the scope of the new review of the impacts of leaving the waste at plant sites is not as broad as the court mandated.

The petition said NRC staff refused to consider the possibility of forbidding the creation of more waste until a repository is constructed — an option the states said the court “explicitly recognized to be reasonable.” Commission staff also declined to look at the potential for requiring plant operators to move spent fuel that has already been cooling in pools for more than five years into dry cask storage units that the states argue are more secure, the document said.

The commission in July decided to continue the rulemaking proceedings and not respond the states’ petition in a separate forum. Kyle Landis-Marinello, assistant attorney general for Vermont, told GSN Wednesday that the states still have the same concerns they raised in May.

During a public meeting at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md., Tuesday, commission staff also faced criticism from activist groups and a former NRC employee…….Diane D’Arrigo, of the watchdog group Nuclear Information and Resource Service, suggested it was disingenuous for the commission to say it has confidence in safe long-term storage of nuclear waste at the same time it is recommending that strict EPA cleanup rules should not be applied in the event of a nuclear incident. ……….

The government shutdown itself calls into question the commission’s ability to ensure safe storage, D’Arrigo argued.

“The shutdown of the government is an indication that it can’t be trusted to have institutional controls over radioactive materials for as long as they remain dangerous,” D’Arrigo said. “It seems incredible to me that the NRC is seriously talking about being able to afford and have institutional controls indefinitely.”……. http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2013/10/shutdown-may-further-delay-nuclear-power-plant-approvals/71238/?oref=ng-HPriver

October 4, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA