Those seeking funding to help the Department of Energy develop a strategy for siting an interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility have a day or so to throw their hat in the ring.
DOE’s roughly $26 million funding opportunity announcement closes Jan. 31, the agency has said. That deadline is about a month later than the department originally intended — DOE in December extended its submission drive into the new year from Dec. 19.
Unveiled in September, the multi-million-dollar interim storage award would provide around funding for up to 16 awardees over a period of roughly two years: around 18 to 24 months. No single award would be greater than $2 million or smaller than $1 million, DOE has said.
DOE says it is not yet seeking a willing host community for a federal interim storage site. Awardees in this round of funding awardees will form a “consent-based siting” consortia to help DOE figure out how to find a host community in a willing territory.
DOE last week announced that it had increased the pot for its interim storage funding opportunity to $26 million from $16 million thanks to additional funding appropriated by Congress in the 2023 omnibus spending bill that became law in December. The extra cash also allowed the agency to increase the number of grant recipients to around 16 from six to eight as originally planned
There is no permanent repository for the nation’s roughly 90,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, and DOE cannot legally build an interim storage site without such a repository. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is the only congressionally authorized repository in the U.S., but it remains on ice after the Barack Obama administration in 2010 pulled the project’s funding. The Joe Biden administration has said that it would not resume work at Yucca Mountain.
