Holtec International and its partner, the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA), LLC, have launched the licensing of an autonomous consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) in southeastern New Mexico on land owned by ELEA, LLC. The facility, named HI-STORE CISF, will provide a significant step on the path to the Federal Government’s long standing obligation for disposition of used nuclear fuel by providing a safe, secure, temporary, retrievable, and centralized facility for storage of used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste until such time that a permanent solution is available. The HI-STORE CISF provides a site to aggregate the used nuclear fuel canisters presently stored across the country at independent used fuel storage installations into one secure location.
The license application for the HI-STORE CISF was submitted to the USNRC on March 31, 2017 and accepted by the USNRC in February 2018 (USNRC Docket No. 72-1051). It is anticipated that the HI-STORE CISF license will be issued by the NRC in mid-2021. The HI-STORE CISF will utilize Holtec’s licensed HI-STORM UMAX, an underground dry storage system engineered and sized to hold all currently licensed dry spent fuel storage canisters throughout the U.S.
The initial application for the HI-STORE facility includes storage of up to 8,680 metric tons of uranium in commercial used fuel (500 canisters) with future amendments for additional canisters up to 10,000 storage locations. The U.S. currently has more than 80,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel in storage and more is being generated every day at a rate of 2,000 metric-tons per year.