Dive Brief:
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved a final rule on the storage of spent nuclear fuel, finding that safe storage is possible for up to 60 years or indefinitely if a permanent waste repository is not built.
- Once the rule is effective, the NRC will lift its suspension of final licensing actions on nuclear power plant licenses and renewals.
- The NRC's decision is the end of a two-year effort to satisfy a remand of the agency's "waste confidence rule" from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Dive Insight:
In remanding the NRC's 2010 revision of its "waste confidence" rule two years ago, the courts directed the nuclear agency to consider the possibility that a geologic repository for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel might never be built. The commission determined through a generic environmental impact statement (GEIS) that indefinite storage would be safely possible at nuclear facilities — though NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane indicated this was not her first option.
"I do not approve publishing the GEIS without addressing the potential range of environmental impacts for indefinite storage, with and without institutional controls," Macfarlane wrote in her comments.
Macfarlane acknowledged that constructing and and operating a permanent repository is "challenging, politically and technically," but stressed that the U.S. "has yet to meet its own long-established responsibility to site a repository for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel."