The Kentucky Resources Council is petitioning the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to hold a hearing challenging the license request made by Global Laser Enrichment to build a first-of-its-kind laser uranium enrichment facility in Paducah.
The petition – filed by KRC on May 5 – urges the NRC to address the legality of the 2016 deal struck between GLE and the U.S. Department of Energy to give the company access to spent nuclear fuel from the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion
Plant site GLE intends to reprocess at the proposed $1.76 billion facility. It also calls into question the NRC’s review of potential environmental impacts of the proposed project on the air, land, water resources and communities in western Kentucky, citing a reliance on “generic” – not site-specific – data in pre-licensing regulatory documents from GLE.
In a KRC release, Executive Director Ashley Wilmes asks the agencies for accountability.
“Federal agencies cannot shortcut environmental review requirements for a project involving uranium enrichment and the handling and reprocessing of massive quantities of radioactive material,” Wilmes said. “The public deserves a clear answer to the long-standing question of whether DOE even has authority to transfer this material for commercial use, and a legally sufficient, site-specific environmental review of the effects of the handling, transfer, reprocessing, and management of radioactive wastes from the proposed facility.”
Global Laser Enrichment has been developing what’s called the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF) for more than a decade. The private company – once associated with Hitachi-General Electric – has made major strides with the project in recent years.
GLE struck a land deal with the local government and an economic development group in 2024 to acquire land adjacent to the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site in western McCracken County. The NRC accepted GLE’s licensing application last August. And, in September, the company reported it had completed “a large-scale enrichment demonstration” at a Wilmington, North Carolina, facility that proved its proprietary technique – which would use lasers to selectively vibrate only the uranium-235 molecules in the tails leftover from the gaseous diffusion process and using a physical method to separate those out from the inert uranium-238 molecules – could work at commercial scale.
Since then, GLE has secured major support from the federal government, the state of Kentucky and McCracken County.
Earlier this year, the DOE awarded the company $28 million to “continue advancing next generation uranium enrichment technology for the nuclear fuel cycle.” A few months later, a state release announced GLE would receive just under $99 million in tax and other economic incentives through the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority and the McCracken County government. The lion’s share of that is expected to come in the form of county tax breaks.
One of the major issues KRC cites in its petition is the legality of the 2016 deal that’s expected to provide the company with its initial feedstock: 200,000 metric tons of depleted uranium “tails” in storage at the former PGDP site, a shuttered uranium enrichment facility that supported national defense efforts in the 1950s before shifting towards the generation of fuel for nuclear power plants and other enrichment sites.
Officials with the U.S. Government Accountability Office have questioned who has the authority to transfer or sell spent nuclear fuel for nearly two decades. Tom Fitzgerald, who is of counsel for KRC and the group’s former executive director, said the problem has yet to be put to bed.
“The GAO twice has said, ‘We think [the DOE’s] authority is murky at best and and likely doubtful,’ because when the Atomic Energy Act was amended to allow for USEC [the U.S Enrichment Corporation] to engage in enrichment activities and to privatize that activity at Paducah, they amended the law to provide that … the DOE cannot rid itself of this waste – of any uranium or uranium hexafluoride or depleted uranium – unless it has specific authority from Congress. And that authority, we think, is lacking,” Fitzgerald said.
Also at issue, Fitzgerald said, are the contents of GLE’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement, an analysis the federal government mandates for most major developments. KRC’s release argues that, in failing to use site-specific data to study potential environmental impacts, the NRC’s review could be violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) – a legal framework designed to assess the impacts of projects, regulations or policies and generally lead them towards the least threatening option.
“We have basically put in a marker there and said, ‘Okay, these are issues that we believe should have been part of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, [that] should have been analyzed more clearly, [that] should have been analyzed using site-specific information rather than relying on a Generic Environmental Impact Statement that was done for nuclear reactors … and we believe that [GLE has] failed to do that to date.”
KRC’s petition also contends that the agency ‘improperly relies on tentative conclusions’ from what they characterize as a “draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement” instead of preparing the detailed, finalized site-specific review that’s required under federal law.
“The thing that makes the most sense for all of the parties is to let the NRC complete the process in the hope that they will correct some of these missteps,” Fitzgerald added. “Then we'll see what the Final Environmental Impact Statement does.”
Along with KRC, Paducah resident Michael McVicker is a party to the potential hearing regarding GLE’s license. In his filing, McVicker – also the lone Democrat running for the Kentucky state House District 3 seat against incumbent GOP Rep. Randy Bridges – said he wanted to take action on behalf of his West Paducah neighbors and for his family.
“As a father raising two young children in this immediate area, I have a vested, urgent interest in ensuring that the introduction of new nuclear infrastructure does not compromise the long-term health, groundwater safety, and emergency response capabilities of our community,” McVicker wrote.
In response to KRC’s filing, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has established a three-judge board – named Wednesday in a Federal Register entry – to preside over this proceeding. According to the NRC’s Office of Public Affairs, that board will review KRC’s hearing request to determine if it meets requirements – and whether any contentions should be admitted – before issuing a decision.
The panel’s first order, issued Tuesday, called for a response from the NRC staff and from GLE by June 1, with the petitioners to reply within a week of that deadline. If the panel awards the hearing, oral arguments would be expected to take place in mid-to-late June.
A GLE representative, when asked for comment on the petition, said the company awaited a decision by the board.
