Should former President Donald Trump win a second term, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management could speed cleanup through expanded use of both commercial nuclear waste disposal sites and a high-level waste reinterpretation, according to a conservative Republican policy document.
The GOP convened its national convention in Milwaukee Monday. Along with Saturday’s unsuccessful assassination attempt against Trump, and selection of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as Trump’s vice presidential nominee, another big topic could be Project 2025, which is portrayed in media reports as an unofficial policy blueprint for another GOP administration.
“Using commercial disposal would reduce capital costs (~ $2 billion) for new disposal sites to accelerate cleanup and reduce local post-cleanup environmental liability at multiple sites,” according to the document. DOE already makes significant use of sites such as the EnergySolutions facility in Clive, Utah and the Waste Control Specialists site in Andrews County, Texas.
“Some states (and contractors), see EM [Environmental Management] as a jobs program and have little interest in accelerating the cleanup,” according to the “needed reforms” section for the $8-billion nuclear cleanup program. “EM needs to move to an expeditious program with targets for cleanup of sites.”
Policy changes and shifting funds from federal renewable energy projects, could conceivably remediate all properties, except the Hanford Site in Washington state, by 2035, according to the document. Hanford is targeted for 2060.
In its fiscal 2025 budget justification for EM, the administration of President Joe Biden said 11 of the 15 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites should be cleaned up by the 2040s, with three more in the 2060s and Hanford sometime between 2078 and 2091.
The Tri-Party Agreement among DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Washington state’s Department of Ecology “has hampered attempts to accelerate and innovate the cleanup,” at Hanford, according to the document. “A central challenge at Hanford is the classification of radioactive waste.”
During Trump’s first term, DOE reinterpreted “high-level radioactive waste” as defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, to allow treatment and disposal of some less-risky high-level waste at low-level waste sites, the Project 2025 document said. Biden’s DOE kept the reinterpretation in place, but Project 2025 seeks wider implementation.
“Implementation needs to continue across the complex, particularly at Hanford,” according to the document.
The government also needs to change Environmental Management’s “culture to promote innovation and completion,” according to Project 2025.
On a side note, the document also recommends restarting federal licensing for the Yucca Mountain high-level waste repository in Nye County, Nev.