After a federal court ruling questioned the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s plans for storing radioactive waste, the commission is putting a hold on license renewals and requests for new reactor construction.
The ruling by the NRC will delay a minimum of 19 requests by utilities for new construction and operating licenses and licence renewals. The projects include a 20-year license renewal for Ameren Corp.’s Callaway County plant in central Missouri; a Calvert Cliffs power plant in Maryland renewal request and Florida Power & Light’s request to build two new reactors at its Turkey Point plant south of Miami.
The delay was sought by a coalition of two dozen environmental groups, after a federal appeals court ruled in June that the Commission’s long-term radioactive waste storage at individual reactors was insufficient.
In response to New York attorney general and New Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont counterparts’ lawsuit over a relicensing application for the Indian Point nuclear plant on the Hudson River, the appeals court found that spent nuclear fuel rods stored on site to be dangerous. The NRC suggested for decades that a national waste storage site be built at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, however the current government administration stopped the plan.