Chain Reaction

Coming nuke power boom bodes licensing pileup at Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Before October, the last time a company sought to build a new nuclear power plant in the United States, Gerald Ford was in the White House. A few weeks ago the Nuclear Regulatory Commission received its first application to build a nuclear reactor in more than three decades. Power company executives have told the agency, which is responsible for licensing and regulating civilian uses of nuclear material, that they expect to submit 15 to 20 more applications for new reactors over the next 18 months.

A growing demand for electricity across the country coupled with concerns about global climate change are fueling the renewed interest in nuclear power because it is the only major source of electricity that does not also produce greenhouse gases and other pollutants responsible for global warming and acid rain.

As NRC Chairman Dale Klein put it at an industry conference in Miami last month: "The nuclear renaissance has officially begun. I don't say that as an advocate for or against nuclear power. It is just a statement of fact."

Another fact worth mentioning is that all these new reactors will need uranium to operate. So it was no real surprise when Oklahoma-based Energy Metals Corp. applied to NRC last month for permission to build and operate a new uranium production facility in Wyoming, the first new facility in the United States in nearly two decades.

The company's application, along with letters NRC has received from half a dozen other companies explaining their intention to seek approval for new or expanded operating licenses, suggest a uranium boom could be on the horizon. NRC spokesman David McIntyre says the agency expects to receive two more applications for new uranium recovery facilities this month.

There are basically two ways to extract uranium from the Earth: through surface or underground mining or, increasingly, a process called in situ recovery, which is what Energy Metals proposes to do. In situ recovery involves injecting a leaching agent, typically oxygen with sodium carbonate, through wells into a body of ore to dissolve the uranium. The leaching solution is pumped back to the surface and to a processing plant where the uranium is separated from the solution in a chemical process. ISR is much less disruptive to the ground surface than mining, especially strip mining, although it requires precautions to ensure that underground drinking water sources are not affected.

Neal Froneman, president and CEO of the Canadian company Uranium One, of which Energy Metals is a subsidiary, describes its application as "a landmark event in the rapidly evolving renaissance of the United States uranium mining industry."

It might also be considered a landmark event for NRC, which is undergoing enormous growth and change as it grapples with this growing market. At the end of 2006, the commission had about 3,100 employees; by 2010, it expects to have more than 4,000 on the payroll, and that doesn't include the growing list of contractors being tapped to handle the burgeoning workload. What's more, the Government Accountability Office last January reported that about 16 percent of NRC employees were eligible to retire, a figure that would increase to 33 percent by 2010 (GAO-07-105). To grow at the requisite rate while replacing retiring workers, NRC will have to hire 300 to 400 new employees a year, GAO said.

To help deal with the workload, the commission is streamlining a number of processes, including certain aspects of granting licenses for uranium recovery and milling, the chemical process whereby uranium is separated from other minerals that dominate uranium ore. In particular, NRC is creating a generic environmental impact statement, says McIntyre. It would consider issues universal to any ISR site or conventional uranium mill. Through a subsequent environmental assessment, the commission would consider site-specific issues.

"It's going to be a tremendous challenge, resource-wise and staff-wise," says McIntyre of the expected rush of applications. "We have told industry that if the applications all come in at once, it's going to be a real logjam, and also, that we need quality applications, as complete as possible and technically accurate. Industry can do its part to make the reviews more efficient."

In the case of ISR operations, the state where the facility is proposed and the Environmental Protection Agency will first have to issue exemptions to allow a company to use any aquifer associated with the project, says McIntyre. Such exemptions are generally expected because water in the immediate vicinity of areas with high concentrations of uranium usually are unsuitable for drinking anyway. "You don't want to drink water tainted with uranium. That's the main requirement," McIntyre says. "We don't want companies doing this in an aquifer that might migrate into drinking water."