Beyond Nuclear - Centralized Storage

Dear NRC Staff,

NRC's time-limited focus on just 40 years of "temporary" or "interim storage" is inappropriately, arbitrarily and capriciously short, especially given Holtec's own admission in its license application to NRC that "interim storage" could persist for 120 years; in response to a Request for Information from DOE (the U.S. Department of Energy), Holtec admitted a CISF could operate for 300 years; and in NRC's own 2014 Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Rule and Generic EIS, the agency acknowledged away-from-reactor ISFSIs (Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations) could go on indefinitely (that is, "forevermore," à la the classic book by that title: Forevermore: Nuclear Waste in America, by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, 1986).

Institutional control could well be lost over such long time periods. Failed containers could release catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity directly into the surface environment, to blow downwind, flow downstream, bioconcentrate up the food chain, and harm people down the generations. This would of course be a LARGE impact (even an EXTRA LARGE impact, as a representative from the Nuclear Issues Study Group in Albuquerque, NM, put it at the June 23, 2020 public comment webinar/call-in session), that should be acknowledged in the DEIS.

NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane attached a note to her vote on the Continued Storage Rule and GEIS, warning that loss of institutional control will remain an ongoing risk. How true. The risk will only increase over time.

This is made all the worse by the bait and switch the NRC has pulled on the American people, yet again. In its Continued Storage Rule and GEIS, NRC expressed "nuclear waste confidence" (the previous name for the Continued Storage Rule was, after all, the Nuclear Waste Confidence Rule), whether long-term storage took place on-site at reactors, or away-from-reactor, as at a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility such as Holtec/ELEA's in NM.

But NRC's nuclear waste confidence was based on such things as the presence of Dry Transfer Systems (DTS), needed in order to safely repackage failing or failed containers, while also protecting worker and public health, and the environment. But NRC has not required a DTS at the Holtec/ELEA CISF. Both Holtec and NRC have indicated such a DTS could be built and operated later, as needed, perhaps many decades into the future, post CISF-opening.

Of course, this does not account for the need for a DTS in real time, in an emergency. A DTS would very likely take a long period of time to build, at huge expense. This could not be done in a hurry. But a high-level radioactive waste emergency could unfold in a hurry, such as a leaking, damaged, or otherwise failing or failed container showing up at the Holtec/ELEA CISF in NM.

Holtec has responded with its "Start Clean/Stay Clean" policy, that problematic containers will simply be "Returned to Sender." This is patently absurd, in the case of leaking, contaminated, damaged, or otherwise failed or failing containers. Depending on the route of the "Return to Sender" shipment, literally millions of Americans could be put at risk, in multiple states, during the second leg of the nonsensical, and now highly dangerous, round-trip. Such a dangerous shipment could easily violate not only NRC regulations, but multiple federal laws.

If the problem shipment happened to have come from Fermi 2 in MI, that would be a 3,000 mile round-trip. If the problem shipment happened to come from Maine Yankee, that would be a 2,300-mile one-way trip, so a 4,600-mile round-trip.

Of course, such a problem container could arrive as soon as the Holtec/ELEA CISF were to open, and at any time after that. Without an operating DTS, the Holtec/ELEA CISF would be caught flat-footed, if and when a problem cask arrives.

Of course, problems can, and likely will, develop with containers, even if they first arrive at the CISF in good shape; age-related degradation over long enough periods of time is guaranteed on Planet Earth, subject as it is to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Things fall apart. Entropy wins in the end. Rust never sleeps. Nor other forms of corrosion and degradation, afflicting all aspects of the CISF, from metal to concrete and everything in between.

If a DTS is never built at the Holtec/ELEA CISF, then catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity into the environment are guaranteed, over a long enough time period, due to container failure. Absent a DTS, NRC's Continued Storage Rule, or Nuclear Waste Confidence, is a nuclear waste con game, perpetrated on the American people. Absence of a DTS just means that loss of institutional control is guaranteed to arrive all that much sooner at the Holtec/ELEA CISF.

The 40-year time horizon in NRC's Holtec/ELEA CISF DEIS is thus inappropriately, arbitrarily, and capriciously short.

I request an acknowledgement that you have received this public comment, made on behalf of Beyond Nuclear's members and supporters in NM, as well as along the transport routes that would be used to haul high-level radioactive waste bound for the Holtec/ELEA CISF, through most states.