NRC blows off environmental coalition's objections to agency's review of illegal de facto permanent parking lot dump application

Maps showing the national and TX-specific routes for commerical irradiated nuclear fuel railway shipments to WCS.NRC has just shown, yet again, what a rogue agency it is, operating outside of the rule of law, and in collusion with the industry it is supposed to regulate.*

On October 26th, an environmental coalition -- including Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), Public Citizen, and the SEED Coalition -- represented by its legal counsel, Washington, D.C.-based attorney Diane Curran, wrote a letter to NRC. The letter demanded that the agency cease and desist from undertaking an environmental review of the Waste Control Specialists, LLC (WCS) application to open a "centralized interim storage site" for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel in Andrews County, Texas. The coalition letter made clear that the application violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, as Amended, in a number of different ways. (See the coalition's October 27th press release, here. Find background information on the broader context, as well as the media coverage in response to the letter and press release, here.)

On December 8th, NRC wrote back. Remarkably, NRC wrote:

In your letter you assert that the NRC must dismiss the WCS application because the WCS plan of operations does not comport with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended. This issue is beyond the scope of NRC staff's acceptance review. "In conducting this 'acceptance review,' the Staff does not consider the technical or legal merits of the application; rather, the Staff's preliminary review is simply a screening process--a determination whether the license application contains sufficient information for the NRC to begin its safety review." U.S. Department of Energy (High Level Waste Repository: Pre-Application Matters, CLI-08-20, 67 NRC 272, 274 (2008). If the NRC staff accepts the application, the NRC will issue a notice of opportunity to request a hearing and petition for leave to intervene, consistent with the NRC's rules of practice in 10 CFR Part 2. To the extent that the issues raised in your letter are relevant to the NRC's decision whether to grant a license to WCS, they will be considered as part of the NRC's licensing review, should the NRC staff accept the application for docketing. (emphasis added)

To add insult to injury, NRC sent the letter snail mail, rather than electronically. It did not arrive until eight days later, on December 14th.

It is quite remarkable that NRC considers the legality, or rather the illegality, of an application for a license -- to store 5,000 to 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive commercial irradiated nuclear fuel for decades (or centuries, or forever) at WCS in Texas -- to be "beyond the scope" of the agency's review!

The scheme would, of course, also launch unprecedented numbers of high-level radioactive waste shipments by truck, train, and/or barge onto the country's roads, rails, and/or waterways. (See maps of projected national and Texas rail transport routes to WCS, above left; see a larger, more legible version here.)

*In 2012, after a year-long independent investigation, the Japanese Parliament concluded that the root cause of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe was collusion between government regulators, the nuclear power industry, and elected officials. Such dangerous collusion exists in spades in the U.S., as well.