Steam rises from the cooling tower of the Unit 1 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tenn.The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a plan Tuesday to allow nuclear wastes to be stored on site at nuclear plants, ending a two-year suspension of new plant licenses over waste concerns and clearing the way for the Tennessee Valley Authority to add another reactor at its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant.
The NRC vote on the controversial rules for radioactive waste disposal came in response to a 2012 federal court ruling that struck down the previous nuclear waste approach. The court ordered the NRC to re-evaluate its waste rules after the Obama administration in 2010 quit building a permanent storage repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada that was supposed to handle nuclear wastes from U.S. reactors.
The NRC’s final rules adopted Tuesday allow radioactive wastes generated from reactors to be stored in spent fuel ponds or dry storage casks at each of the 103 commercial reactors in the United States.
TVA has stored nuclear wastes in dry castes for the past decade at both its Sequoyah and Browns Ferry nuclear plants. But the federal utility needed NRC approval for new on-site storage to proceed with the licensing of the Unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar.
Anti-nuclear groups had urged the NRC to delay Tuesday’s vote until outgoing commissioner Bill Magwood — who critics claim had a conflict of interest because of his future job — could vote on the measure. The NRC board and Magwood insisted the time had come for a final vote on the generic environmental impact study released last year.