The United States must finally settle on a strategy for disposition of spent nuclear fuel if it hopes to revitalize its atomic energy sector, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Wednesday, without offering a timeline for introduction of a bill intended to help achieve that goal.
Barrasso discussed the matter in starting off a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the current status and future of U.S. nuclear power.
“Washington is long overdue to fulfill our legal obligation to dispose of nuclear waste,” Barrasso, the committee chairman, said in his opening remarks. “That includes advancing a nuclear waste policy centered on completing the scientific review of the Yucca Mountain site. So I put forth draft legislation to do so.”
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act made the Department of Energy responsible for permanent disposal of what is now roughly 100,000 metric tons of used fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste. Congress amended the law five years later to direct that the material be buried in a geologic repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department in 2008 filed a license application for the facility with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, over the loud and continuing objections of the state of Nevada’s leadership.
However, the proceeding has been frozen for the better part of a decade after being defunded by the Obama administration. The Obama DOE embarked on a short-lived program for “consent-based” siting of nuclear waste disposal, which was curtailed when President Donald Trump took office in January 2017. The Trump administration has failed repeatedly to persuade Congress to appropriate money to resume licensing of Yucca Mountain.
In April, Barrasso released a discussion draft of his Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019. The bill, the Senate’s version of legislation that originated in the House in 2017, contains various amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to advance both centralized, temporary storage and final disposal of radioactive waste. They include: permanently withdrawing the Yucca Mountain property for use by the Energy Department for the repository; increasing the legal cap on disposal of spent fuel from 70,000 metric tons to 110,000 metric tons; and authorizing DOE to site, build, and run at least one “monitored retrievable storage” facility, potentially by a private organization.
Queried Wednesday, an Environment and Public Works Committee spokesperson did not say when the legislation might be formally filed: “Chairman Barrasso continues to want to address the issue in a bipartisan way. This issue remains a priority for Chairman Barrasso. He is working with other members of the committee on the draft legislation.”
The corresponding bill from Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) passed out of House in 2018 but never got a Senate vote before the 115th Congress ended. Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) this year filed an updated version of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, which is waiting on a vote by the House Energy and Commerce Committee after being advanced by a subcommittee in September.
The waste issue received little attention during Wednesday’s nearly two-hour hearing, which featured testimony from experts including former NRC commissioner and assistant energy secretary for nuclear energy Peter Lyons. Lawmakers and witnesses focused more on issues including development of new nuclear power technologies and the threat posed to the U.S. industry by China and Russia.
Barrasso noted that there are 96 nuclear power reactors in operation today in the United States, down from a peak of 112 in 1990. Nine reactors have closed over the last seven years, and another eight are scheduled to be retired in the next five years, he said.
Senators Refile Spent Fuel Dry-Storage Legislation
Separately, three U.S. senators on Wednesday reintroduced legislation intended to expedite the transfer of radioactive spent fuel into dry storage at nuclear power plants.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is lead sponsor on the legislation, with co-sponsors Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“Addressing the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel is critical for the communities around our nuclear plants,” Gillibrand said in a prepared statement. “This legislation will ensure that each nuclear plant has a plan in place to responsibly transfer spent fuel from spent fuel pools into dry cask storage and maintain critical safety, security, and emergency planning requirements until that transfer is complete.
If passed, the Dry Cask Storage Act of 2019 would require nuclear power licensees within 180 days to submit a plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for transfer of used fuel from cooling pools to dry casks. Licensees would then have seven years to carry out the plan.
The commission, the regulator for the U.S. nuclear industry, would have 90 days to accept or reject a plan. Licensees would then have 30 days to make revisions and the commission another 30 days to rule on the updated plan.
Beginning two years after approval of the plan, the NRC would conduct a biennial review of licensee adherence to the storage approach laid out in the document.
Any nuclear power plant that is not complying with the NRC-approved plan would be required to expand its emergency planning zone to 50 miles, the bill says. Otherwise, the zones would have a radius of at least 10 miles.
Markey was critical of the NRC’s move last week to reduce emergency preparedness requirements at the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in his state, which still has nearly 3,000 used fuel assemblies in its cooling pool. The decision included elimination of the dedicated emergency preparedness zone around the Cape Cod plant.
“Cutting these planning and emergency response requirements for cost savings just cuts away at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s legitimacy in the eyes of Massachusetts residents,” Markey said Wednesday during the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.
The bill was referred to the committee for consideration. The same panel received the 2017 version of the legislation, but never voted on it.
Power company Entergy permanently closed the Pilgrim plant on May 31 and then sold it in August to energy technology Holtec for decommissioning. The commonwealth of Massachusetts had petitioned the NRC for a hearing on the license transfer needed for the deal to proceed. The agency in August approved the transfer of the plant’s operations and spent-fuel storage licenses to Holtec, but has yet to rule on the Massachusetts petition. The commonwealth in September filed a federal lawsuit to force the regulator to reverse the license transfer.
