Final decisions on licenses for 17 U.S. nuclear power plants — including Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Claiborne County — have been suspended by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission until the agency reviews risks associated with storing spent nuclear fuel.

Tuesday’s decision by the NRC freezes only final phases in each plant’s multistep process to license an operator or renew a current license, many of which weren’t expected until 2013.

The ruling’s distinction between what can continue and what can’t allows Entergy Nuclear to move at its current pace, spokeswoman Suzanne Anderson said this morning.

“We don’t anticipate a significant impact upon Grand Gulf’s relicensing schedule,” Anderson said.

Grand Gulf’s license expires in 2024, and an application to extend it an additional 20 years was expected to be completed by September 2013. In June, a six-month, $874 million effort was completed to refuel the plant and upgrade its generating capacity by 13 percent.

Overall, the action will stop final steps on nine construction and operating licenses, eight renewals for operating licenses and one early site permit.

The NRC’s decision came after 24 environmental groups and individuals asked the agency to stop all license renewals until it complied with a federal court order issued in June that the issue of nuclear fuel rod storage be reassessed.

The order issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit threw out the Waste Confidence Rule, used since 1984 by the NRC to license new reactors or renew licenses for existing facilities. It held the highly radioactive fuel rods at U.S. reactors would be stored safely until a central repository was established.

“This is a preliminary legal victory for everybody concerned about the mountain of nuclear waste that continues to grow without a scientifically accepted solution,” said Paul Gunter, of Beyond Nuclear, in a statement. The Maryland-based group intervened in Grand Gulf’s re-licensing process.

In 2010, the Department of Energy halted an effort to license a central resting site at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas, after environmentalists and members of Congress opposed it strongly, citing concerns over long-term emissions. Since the 1990s, spent fuel rods have been stored on-site in deepwater pools.

Plants affected by NRC’s decision are Grand Gulf, Callaway Plant, in Missouri; Calvert Cliffs, in Maryland; Fermi Nuclear Power Plant, in Michigan; William States Lee III Nuclear Station, in South Carolina; Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ohio; Turkey Point in Florida; Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant in Texas; Seabrook Station in New Hampshire; Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant in California; Bell Bend Nuclear Plant in Pennsylvania; Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant in North Carolina; Levy County Nuclear Plant in Florida; South Texas Project in Texas; Bellefont and Watts Bar nuclear plants, both in Tennessee; and North Anna in Virginia.