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The company behind plans for Utah's first nuclear power plant told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission it is hard at work on its proposal.
Blue Castle Holdings assembled key consultants to update the NRC on the work they are doing on environmental, community and earthquake questions. Their answers will be included in an "early site application" Blue Castle is expected to submit to the NRC in early 2013.
"We're well under way," said William Lettis of Fugro Consultants Inc., which is heading up a seismic review team. "It's a challenge."
Thursday's meeting at NRC headquarters outside of Washington, D.C., coincided with a meeting in Green River of people drafting the evacuation plans for the area surrounding the proposed plant. The two 1,500-megawatt nuclear reactors would be built about six miles from the central eastern Utah community at a projected cost of around $13 billion.
Utah-based interest groups listened in, along with representatives from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and the Attorney General's Office, on the day-long conference call. Christopher Thomas of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah and Sarah Fields of Moab-based Uranium Watch asked about the role local and state officials are playing in developing emergency plans and carrying them out.
The Blue Castle consultants have already conducted archaeological and environmental surveys at the proposed plant site, part of a new industrial park being developed by Emery County. The company also has set up a weather-tracking tower and drilled core samples to study earthquake patterns in the area.
The early site permit that Blue Castle plans to seek basically certifies that the proposed location is suitable for a nuclear-power reactor. The process is expected to take at least 1 year and could cost as much as $30 million, Blue Castle has said.
Before the plant could be built, it also would have to secure a second NRC approval — for a combined operating license. That application would not be submitted until after the early site permit is issued.
On Thursday, consultants talked at length about a team of geology experts that is being assembled to analyze the site. They want a tough, in-depth review of likely seismic faults (there are 54 significant ones within 200 miles) to answer such questions as how often an earthquake fault becomes active and how severely it is likely to shake.
This scientific review is intended to take a hard look at all the possibilities, said Lettis, including the differences between natural earthquakes and those caused by mining.
"I'm hoping to capture the entire range of opinions in our profession on these [diverse geological] topics," he said.
The NRC acknowledged that gathering all the data, crunching it in computers and determining what it might mean about seismic risk will be a challenge to accomplish in the next year.
Michael Eudy, who is overseeing the application for the NRC, said his agency needs to check its budget for working on the Utah project in light of Blue Castle's ambitious schedule and funding constraints. He called the presentation "very informative."