Thursday, the Missouri Coalition for the Environment (MCE) filed an appeal to Ameren Missouri's Callaway Energy Center's license extension, which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted last month.
While the environmental group's appeal would not immediately affect the Callaway nuclear facility's license, MCE and court documents state it would serve as a "placeholder" contention so that later court decisions could have the potential to affect its license.
MCE Safe Energy Director Ed Smith said the organization feels that placeholder contention is necessary because the legal adequacy of an NRC rule regarding how spent nuclear fuel is stored longterm is currently contested in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Smith added that MCE is not asking the NRC to permanently deny the Callaway Energy Center's (CEC) license renewal request.
"We are simply asking the court to make sure that the Callaway nuclear reactor's license is not extended pending the outcome of this spent nuclear fuel waste litigation," Smith said.
Diane Curran, MCE's legal counsel, said the environmental group wants to litigate the NRC's rule and ensure that any outcome from that case will apply to the Callaway plant.
"It's putting our foot in the door and saying to the court and the NRC: It's not over yet with respect to Callaway because of pending rule making and GEIS (generic environmental impact statement) appeal," Curran said.
Since that case - State of New York versus NRC - was filed last fall, multiple other states and environmental groups, including MCE, have joined as petitioners. The petitioners in that case, according to court documents, are asking for a review of the NRC's recently revised Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Rule. The NRC made its revised and renamed rule effective Oct. 20, 2014. Prior to October, it took a two-year hiatus from issuing license extensions and new licenses to nuclear facilities while the rule was revised.
According to NRC records, the NRC revised its rule, formally titled the Waste Confidence Rule, in response to a 2012 Court Ruling which vacated the NRC's rule. Curran along with co-counsel Geoff Fettus were the attorneys who won the case, leading the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court to require the NRC to revise its fuel storage rule.
Curran said the rule was thrown out because the court said the NRC had not analyzed the environmental impacts for what would happen if a permanent repository for spent fuel was never created.
"We think that the NRC did a very poor job of evaluating the environmental impacts of spent fuel storage for an extended period," Curran said during a press conference Thursday. "We've asked the court ... to basically suspend it (the Court's review of the Callaway plant's license renewal) pending the outcome of the rule making and GEIS appeal."
Ameren Missouri said in a statement to the Fulton Sun that it is in the process of reviewing MCE's appeal. The NRC's license renewal last month extended the Callaway nuclear facility's operating license 20 years: from 2024 to 2044.
"We are confident the NRC will stand by its decision," Ameren Missouri said in a statement. "Renewal of our license ensures that Callaway, which is one of the safest and highest performing carbon-free producing generating centers in the United States, will continue to benefit our customers."
Ameren Missouri's CEC generates about 20 percent of the electricty for the utility company's 1.2 million customers in the state.
While the Callaway plant received a license extension from the NRC on March 6, it had expected to hear an NRC decision regarding its license extension request in December. However, MCE filed contentions in December that put the license renewal on hold. Last month, the commissioners decided to renew the plant's license despite those contentions, which were still pending before the NRC commissioners until Thursday. The commission denied the environmental group's December request to intervene in the CEC's license renewal, stating that the request was out of the scope of licence renewal proceedings.
The commission's denial of that request is what led MCE to file its appeal Thursday, Curran said.
Regarding the case which questions the NRC's revised rule, Curran said that appeal, pending in the D.C. Ciruit Court, is waiting on a briefing schedule from the court. She is hoping that case will hear oral arguments either this fall or spring 2016.
"If we ultimately win our appeal of the rule ... we will ask the court to reverse the Callaway license renewal decision," Curran said.
If the court decides to again throw out the NRC's rule regarding storage of spent nuclear fuel, MCE's appeal filed Thursday has the potential to cause the CEC to revert back to its original operating license until the NRC produces a long-term storage plan for spent nuclear fuel.