In 2012, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that NRC could no longer presume the existence of a repository and must do an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to address the impacts on public health and safety if spent fuel is not deposited in a repository.

The NRC's response was to write a "new" draft EIS and draft Waste Confidence Rule. (Fed Reg/Vol.78,No.178/Friday, Sept. 13, 2013/Proposed Rules, pg., 56780); both embed the NRC's previous faulty assumptions. When the new Draft Generic EIS (DGEIS) and rule become final, they will continue to allow the NRC to pretend that all reactors are the same, and will effectively prevent state officials and the public questioning this or litigating spent fuel issues.

NRC's Draft Generic EIS claims, without credible support, that no serious impacts will occur from leaving the spent fuel onsite indefinitely. The NRC simply substituted its offsite repository fantasy for another equally unsupported fantasy that waste could remain safely on-site in above ground storage indefinitely. This assumption defies commonsense and conflicts with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA).

The proposed Waste Confidence Rule that accompanies the DGEIS incorporates and depends on the latter's baseless conclusions.

The Draft GEIS and the Proposed Waste Confidence Rule findings are absurd. Both conclude that spent fuel can be safely stored in overcrowded spent fuel for 60 years after a reactor's license to operate expires, and then essentially forever in on-site dry casks. For Pilgrim, this means that spent fuel can be stored in Pilgrim's pool until 2092; when the pool and its supporting infrastructure will be 120 years old; and that even after it is finally moved into dry casks, it can safely remain on-site forever.

Pilgrim Watch supports moving spent fuel that is more than 5 years out of reactor into dry casks as quickly as possible, and not allowing every spent fuel assembly that Pilgrim has ever produced to remain in the spent fuel pool for another almost 80 years. An abundance of technically competent documents support this alternative; all are ignored by the NRC's drafts.

We also disagree with NRC's unqualified and unsupported assumption that spent fuel can be indefinitely stored safely in dry casks placed on outside concrete pads, not only for the first 100 years that the NRC calls an "interim period," but essentially forever simply by providing new casks and pads at 100 year intervals.

Any reasonable long-term storage, either in the spent fuel pool, should require specific safety requirements. The NRC's "new" GEIS and Waste Confidence Rule have none.

Further, we support requiring the NRC to do what it really should do: Give real consideration not allowing continued production of spent fuel until there actually a safe and environmentally acceptable permanent waste repository to receive the spent fuel that has been generated; and go back to the drawing board and address the environmental impacts of continued storage for the period after plant shutdown in site-specific licensing reviews.

The DGEIS and proposed Rule try to justify their conclusions by saying that a spent fuel pool or dry cask accident/failure will have only a "small" environmental impact. To reach this conclusion, the NRC assumed that the probability of an accident was insignificant, and multiplied its assumed consequences of an accident by that negligible probability. The result was exactly what the NRC and industry intended: the probability of an accident is so small so that any potential impact no matter how significant is trivial.

This is not the only unsupported and absurd assumption in the NRC's analysis. For example, NRC assumed that everything would be safe because institutional controls would be in place and be at same level of regulatory control as currently exists today. This is not a comforting thought. Oversight inevitably diminishes when operations cease. The NRC fails to enforce its regulations today. Is there is any reason to think that some institution will do so 60 to 300 + years into the future? Is there any realistic hope that some future NRC will reject the current NRC's practice of using cherry-picked out-dated and unscientific reports and ignoring technically competent documents produced by independent scientists and even some by the NRC's own staff? Will the NRC exist?

Finally, perhaps the most fundamental flaw in the DGEIS is that it treats all reactors generically, assuming that they and the risks they present are the same regardless of their design, age, condition or location. The undeniable truth is that no two reactors are alike, that their potential environmental impacts will vary from site to site, and each reactor should be considered on a site-specific basis.

The Attorney Generals of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New York and major environmental groups commented on the draft, laying the groundwork for a legal challenge in federal court. The comment period ended on December 20th and 715 individual comments were posted. The final EIS and Waste Confidence Rule are expected in March.