U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday that he will champion a change in law that would allow the Department of Energy to contract private companies in storing nuclear waste.
The move would clear the way for DOE’s search for consent-based interim sites that would house spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste now stored at facilities across the nation. Waste Control Specialists and Holtec International aim to build the first two sites, respectively in Texas and New Mexico. The agency in late December laid out a three-part process, starting with a pilot site for spent fuel storage, followed by the interim facilities, and eventually one or more long-term geologic repositories.
Alexander, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, said that moving forward with interim siting would help end the 25-year impasse over building and operating a national nuclear waste repository. Speaking during a subcommittee hearing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s fiscal 2017 budget request, Alexander argued that the storage facilities will complement plans for the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, not replace them. The Obama administration halted the project, but the facility’s future under its successor is not clear-cut. According to a Las Vegas Sun editorial, GOP nominee hopefuls Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) have voiced there support the use of Yucca Mountain, while Donald Trump has not offered an opinion.
“I strongly believe that Yucca Mountain can and should be part of the solution,” Alexander said in his opening remarks. “But regardless of where we build permanent repositories, we still need facilities where we can consolidate all of the used fuel that is currently located at more than 75 sites around the country.”
In this year’s appropriations bill, Alexander says he plans to include a pilot program that would allow the creation of consolidated storage sites for spent nuclear fuel, as well as a new, stand-alone law allowing DOE to contract private companies for storage of nuclear fuel.
Panel Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has been outspoken in the past against Yucca, gave Alexander’s plan her support, saying she hopes progress can be made in developing a nuclear waste policy.
“We cannot be stopped by Yucca from doing good public policy around nuclear,” Feinstein said. “We’ve tried before, but we have to succeed.”
Alexander touched on funding for interim storage license review, for which the NRC expects to spend approximately $1.4 million in fiscal 2017. While NRC Chairman Stephen Burns said that amount covers the review of WCS’ application to build an independent spent fuel storage installation in West Texas, the commission very well could end up with a second application from Holtec and its partners. Burns said NRC expects the WCS application in April. An individual review would be expected to last about three years. Alexander asked Burns if his agency has enough resources for two reviews, to which Burns replied that NRC can reprioritize its workload to make room.
In its budget proposal for fiscal 2017, the agency has requested $970.2 million in total funding. Because the NRC recovers about 90 percent of its budget from license fees, the net appropriation request is about $124 million, compared to $154 million in fiscal 2016.
Alexander also asked Burns why NRC did not request any funding for Yucca Mountain license review. It’s estimated, at this point, that it would cost a remaining $330 million to finish the license application for Yucca. As of December, NRC had about $3.1 million left in nuclear waste funding, which the agency plans to spend on the supplemental environmental impact statement for a Yucca Mountain groundwater study, expected this spring, and the publication of Yucca licensing documents.
“This is the administration’s budget,” Burns said. “The administration did not provide for additional funds on Yucca Mountain.”
While Alexander said he and Feinstein are united “on the urgent desire to break the nuclear waste stalemate,” the same can’t be said about Yucca Mountain. NRC findings have concluded that the Yucca Mountain repository could safely isolate spent fuel for 1 million years. Alexander said that along with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, a federal law that established Yucca as the only site for a national repository, should dictate that Nevada is the answer. Following law and science, he said, would mean a great deal of storage room for nuclear waste.
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has led the fight against Yucca, has said the project is inherently flawed, given DOE’s lack of required land and water rights. Instead, he has argued that Congress should focus on consent-based siting, rather than “shove nuclear waste down a community’s throat.”
