Federal regulators on Monday announced a memorandum of understanding with the Prairie Island Indian Community regarding the relicensing process for spent fuel storage at Xcel Energy's nuclear plant of the same name. It gives added weight to many of the tribe's comments on the relicensing but stops short of meeting the tribe's request to broaden the review process to study potential impacts from long-term dry cask storage.
Xcel's license to store spent fuel in dry casks at the plant near Minneapolis expires next October. Following a June court ruling, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported, the tribe asked the agency to study risks associated with the decades-long storage of spent fuel at the plant in the absence of a national waste repository. At the time, the NRC indicated it did not want to undertake its study of long-term dry cask storage risk on a plant-by-plant basis before completing a broader review required by the court.
The MOU, while not legally binding, names the tribe as a cooperating agency in the Prairie Island waste storage environmental review process. The agency formally recognized the tribe's knowledge of archaeological resources, socioeconomics, land use and environmental justice in the region. And the NRC said it would give extra weight to the tribe's comments in those areas.