A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate this week would prevent the government from using federal funds to develop privately-owned interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel, according to a press release.
If it became law, the bipartisan legislation unveiled Wednesday by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) would bar the feds from using any funding “for any costs associated with the identification, development, licensing, granting of rights-of-way, construction, operation, decommissioning, or post-decommissioning maintenance and monitoring” of private interim storage facilities. The proposed ban would last until the Department of Energy notifies Congress that a permanent spent fuel repository is operational, the bill said.
The measure would also require DOE to submit a report to Congress within 180 days, or six months, of enactment detailing possible locations of future interim storage facilities and repositories, as well as the “estimated costs and risks” of those projects.
The proposed bill could stymie efforts by two private companies to build interim storage facilities in the southwest U.S. Interim Storage Partners (ISP), which got a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for such a site in September, is eyeing Andrews, Texas for its project. The other site, proposed by Holtec International, would be built in Eddy County, N.M., if it survives an NRC review.
“Until the Department of Energy fulfills its statutory responsibility to provide permanent waste disposal, interim sites can become permanent sites. That is not something my state is signed up for,” Heinrich said in a statement Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Cruz did not return a request for comment by deadline Friday.
Meanwhile, New Mexico and Texas have already pulled out all of the stops back home to block both projects. In Santa Fe, a proposed bill that would have given New Mexico more legal headroom for blocking the planned Holtec site died in the state House in February. State Attorney General Hector Balderas has also sued NRC over both proposed interim storage projects.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in September signed a law banning the storage of high-level nuclear waste in the state. The Lone Star State has also filed its own legal challenge to the proposed ISP site.
