PHOENIX — Thanks to an updated agreement between the federal government and a nuclear power plant operator, owners of advanced nuclear reactors will likely have to foot the bill for spent fuel storage at their facilities, an industry expert said here this week.
For advanced reactors, the new spent fuel management contract between the Department of Energy and plant operators will likely mean that “the burden is going to be on the plant’s operator, and the ratepayers for the utilities that own those reactors,” said Sven Bader, a technical consultant for Orano USA, during remarks Tuesday at the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix.
The Department of Energy has traditionally funded spent fuel storage operations and nuclear power plants through a multimillion-dollar judgment fund, established after the agency in 1998 failed to meet its obligation under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to start collecting spent fuel from reactor sites.
In 2008, however, DOE negotiated a new contract with the Southern Company, which was building two new reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, that allowed the agency to sidestep spent fuel payments.
Under that new contract, DOE will not collect spent fuel from generating sites for at least 20 years, Bader said. After that time elapses, it could be at least another decade before the agency comes to pick the waste up.
Such a framework could be “a good road map” for contracts between DOE and advanced nuclear operators, Bader said.
“The reason that’s bad news,” Bader said, “is because advanced reactors have to account for the cost of the back end of the fuel cycle themselves. It’s going to be imperative to them to design an efficient and economic back end of the fuel cycle to keep their ratepayer dollar down.”
However, Bader added, the burden of spent fuel management shouldn’t be a dealbreaker for advanced reactor developers. “I don’t want anyone under the impression that we are dead here,” he said. “This can be expensive, but we are economizing these activities.”
Bader told RadWaste Monitor Tuesday that DOE had “made clear” that the agency will not be paying for spent fuel storage at advanced reactors. “There will be no suing DOE for $5 million a year,” he said.
A spokesperson for DOE didn’t immediately return a request for comment on whether the agency would follow the Vogtle example for advanced reactors’ spent fuel.
Advanced reactor deployment has inched closer to reality in recent years. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January approved the country’s first advanced nuclear design, a small modular reactor (SMR) from NuScale Power. Companies like Holtec International, which is designing its own SMR, has said that its facilities could be built at decommissioned nuclear power plants.
