Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff is optimistic about her opportunity to contribute to the federal government’s 30-year quest to solve the nuclear waste storage problem.
“It’s really exciting,” Huff, silhouetted against a virtual background depicting a hot nuclear reactor emblazoned with the Office of Nuclear Energy seal, told RadWaste Monitor during a Microsoft Teams interview early Thursday morning.
Huff’s enthusiasm was largely directed at the Department of Energy’s latest attempt to site a federally-run interim storage facility for more than 80,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel currently stranded at reactor sites across the U.S. The agency is reviewing community responses to its November request for information (RFI), which asked the public how it should go about finding a host community willing to take on the nation’s nuclear waste inventory.
It’s a riddle that the globe’s nuclear pioneer has yet to solve, as demonstrated by the ongoing difficulties plaguing two private companies that want to build commercial interim storage sites in New Mexico and Texas.
Stakeholders at the national, state and local levels have rallied against both proposed projects, arguing before federal judges and state legislatures that, in the absence of a federal repository for nuclear waste, there is nothing ‘interim’ about interim storage sites.
Meanwhile, Huff, still in her inaugural weeks at the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) after an overwhelmingly bipartisan confirmation vote in the Senate, is also overseeing the rollout of DOE’s civil nuclear credits program — a roughly $6 billion bailout greenlit by November’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that aims to stem the national tide of nuclear power plant closures.
The agency, which plans to give out the credits in $1.2 billion increments over five years, is still taking applications for its first round of payouts.
Although she hasn’t been assistant secretary for nuclear energy, or NE-1, for too long, Huff has worked at DOE in various capacities over the past 12 months. The former nuclear science professor was tapped by the Joe Biden administration in May 2021 for the office’s number two slot, and served as acting NE-1 for about nine months before joining the office of energy secretary Jennifer Granholm as a senior advisor.
Now that she’s at the top, though, Huff has her work cut out for her on the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, as RadWaste Monitor learned in an exclusive interview this week.
RWM: Let’s jump right in with one of the biggest issues in front of NE right now — interim storage. How far along are you in the siting process?
Huff: Well, it’s really exciting. We have received lots of responses to our request for information (RFI) on the consent-based siting process. Those responses are published online, and they are going to inform the way we move forward with the program, how we update our 2017 draft plan for siting consent based interim storage and the plan for moving forward in the coming months.
Those responses are being reviewed in great detail. We’re incorporating some of their suggestions into our process moving forward. Soon, we hope to be able to share a summary of those responses with the public. We also got a lot of questions in our [public interim storage] webinars that we weren’t able to address live. Our team is continuing to respond to some of the questions we received in the webinars, specifically, so that every single person who has a question gets a response.
We’re preparing for the possibility that the next step will be a potential funding opportunity announcement, which should allow communities to have access to some resources to further explore their level of consent, to explore opportunities for engagement with us and to explore the scientific basis around any potential interim storage site.
Any more information about when the RFI summary should come out?
That should be in the coming months. You should see it this summer.
Let’s talk about that potential funding opportunity. How much money will be available to communities?
Right now, we’re still finalizing some of those details. But, it’ll be based on the funding that was directed to us by Congress in the 2021-2022 budget. We have something on the order of over $10 million in that space.
Have any communities expressed interest in hosting an interim storage site at this point?
At this point, we’re not really even asking that question. We’d really like communities to have some time to really stick with it and bring a lot of their constituents on board. We’re not identifying any communities that specifically raise their hand.
Is DOE having that conversation internally? Have you identified any communities that, should they come forward, would make good candidates for interim storage?
Well, there’s certainly a lot of interest, and there are certainly communities that we think could potentially be there. But, we’re not at the stage where we can identify one or single it out.
Consent-based siting has been a cornerstone of DOE’s stated interim storage priorities under this administration and even as far back as the 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission. The department won’t move forward with an interim storage site until it has the go-ahead from all levels of the host community: state, local, tribal and others. Obviously, the interests of all those parties don’t always align. How will DOE help settle those differences?
Carefully, and with a great eye towards environmental and energy justice. While it may be a challenge to get consent at all those levels, I think it will be the only pathway to success. I think it may require incentives and resources to ensure that there’s a balance between burden and benefit in all of these communities.
Are there any specific plans being kicked around at DOE on how to address that potential issue?
Absolutely. There were a lot of great ideas on this topic in the responses to the request for information. For example: what if an interim storage facility is co-located with a research and development facility, like a national laboratory, focused on spent nuclear fuel recycling or clean energy systems more broadly? I think those are all on the table at this point. We’re really excited to see the creativity from the folks who responded to the RFI.
Something we’ve discussed before is the challenge posed by existing nuclear waste law. You’ve acknowledged that there will need to be some action to change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) before an interim storage site can actually get built. Has DOE been working with Congress to build political capital for that?
Our congressional allies are so interested in this process. I’m really grateful to all of them. We’ve had a lot of conversations with Congress about this issue, specifically. We have been having a lot of those conversations with congressional staff. And I have to say, it’s been really refreshing to see the number of congressional and Senate leaders interested in actually finding a solution. So, I’m really hopeful.
Which members of Congress have been leading the charge on that front?
You know, there are so many, it’s really hard to list. As you know, there’s a spent fuel caucus. They’re very vocal and helpful. There are senators and congresspeople from New Mexico and Texas and Nevada who have all been particularly interested. Congressman [Mike] Levin [D-Calif.] has been deeply interested in this topic. I had, in fact, the opportunity to meet Congressman Levin in person during my visit to Canada a couple months ago.
There are interested congresspeople and senators from every state that hold spent nuclear fuel, plus a number of states that don’t. I think the number of congresspeople who aren’t actively involved on this topic is probably a shorter list.
What’s the department’s contingency plan if no communities come forward as potential hosts?
Well, I think we would continue to reach out to opportunities and places. We’d go back to the drawing board and see if there were communities that were missed.
I feel very confident that, in these United States, there is a place where this responsibility can be managed. It’s a challenge that has been solved, technically. There is a safe way to store material for the interim. I think that there are many locations in the U.S. where a community could take on that responsibility. We just need to find one.
Two private companies, Holtec International and Interim Storage Partners, are in the process of finalizing interim storage facilities to be built in New Mexico and Texas. As you know, those projects have faced significant pushback from their host communities. Is DOE paying attention to those as a preview of what it can expect for its own interim storage siting process?
Of course. I think every lesson learned from the last 40 years of attempting to find a solution to this challenge is another arrow in our quiver. It’s sort of an opportunity for us. We’re keeping a really close eye on those lessons.
How would you compare the private interim storage siting process to your own plans?
I think a critical challenge for any privately owned facility is that they fundamentally lack the government-to-government communications that are necessary for long-term continued state support from congresspeople, governors and the broader state population. It really will help to have a government-to-government relationship in those conversations. That’s something that is fundamentally missing when we have a private-only solution.
Let’s talk about another big part of DOE’s back-end work: the civil nuclear credits program. The department last month moved the deadline for the first round of credit application to July 5. Can you tell us a bit more about why that timeline was changed?
Absolutely. We made a really aggressive push to get the program out in a timely manner, so that it could be available to the nuclear plants that are at risk. We then received requests from plants that intended to apply that indicated that they would like an extension. So, responsive to the need to keep existing plants open — the purpose of this whole program — it was extended.
Do you feel that the number of responses for the first funding cycle have been at all hindered by DOE’s requirement that applying plants must be facing imminent closure? Have there been fewer responses than expected?
There were lots of responses to our request for information about this. I can’t comment on how many folks have applied yet, but I will say that the full intent is to be able to focus this first round on those very specific plants that are truly ready to close. And so it was expected that there’s a smaller eligibility pool, that was intentional.
The nuclear credits program came too late for some plants. Michigan’s Palisades plant comes to mind. Plant operator Entergy has said that it would have been difficult to keep Palisades open, since they already agreed to hand the site over to Holtec and the plan to shutter had been on the book for around five years. How do you square the short turnaround of the nuclear credits program with that reality?
Well, we have lots more funding rounds coming. They’ll come rapidly, and they’ll be continuous. So, there will be lots of opportunities for plants with long term closure in the works to start applying.
Will you work with states and plant operators to navigate those challenges in future cycles?
Absolutely.
You’ve only been NE-1 in an official capacity for a couple of weeks. Looking ahead, what is the biggest challenge you anticipate facing in your new role?
Today, we in the United States, as in much of the democratic nuclear energy world, rely heavily on Russia for our uranium enrichment and conversion services. It will be a challenge in the United States to ensure the security of that fuel supply chain. I am concerned about finding that solution, along with members of Congress who are deeply interested in that solution. And the administration has a potential role to play in supporting a solution to energy security in that space.
