The Department of Energy and Battelle Memorial Institute are calling it quits on their $35 million contract for a deep borehole nuclear waste storage field test, after failing to gain public support and secure two separate sites in North Dakota and South Dakota.
“We wanted to let you know that the Department of Energy and Battelle Memorial Institute have mutually agreed to walk away from the current Deep Borehole Field Test contract,” DOE Legislative Affairs Specialist Patricia Temple wrote in an internal email that RadWaste Monitor obtained Wednesday evening. “The Department will issue a new competitive solicitation in the coming weeks with modified requirements, taking into account the lessons learned from our efforts thus far.”
Temple said DOE is committed to completing the tests on deep borehole storage, which Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has said could serve as an option for storing high-level DOE-managed nuclear waste. The Obama administration is exploring boreholes as one potential solution in replacing the canceled national repository planned at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Battelle Senior Project Advisor Steve Winberg said in a telephone interview Friday that the contract team, which included Texas-based oil-field services giant Schlumberger and Swiss company Solexperts, did not fully appreciate the level of community concern that can arise when pitching any nuclear-related project.
“Recognizing that there was going to be absolutely no nuclear material used in this program, but because it’s being done to evaluate the possibility of maybe disposing of nuclear waste underground, that and that alone created great consternation in the two communities that we approached,” Winberg said. “I don’t think we fully understood the level of concern when you put the word nuclear into a program.”
Originally scheduled to break ground on Sept. 1, the estimated five-year project would produce data on the feasibility of storing waste in 16,000-foot boreholes drilled into crystalline rock formations. DOE and Battelle in March canceled plans at their original site near Rugby, N.D., where the Pierce County Commission shared residents’ concerns that a successful field test would eventually lead to actual nuclear waste storage in the state. DOE and Battelle then eyed a site in Spink County, S.D., but canceled those plans in June after the Spink County Commission and residents aired the same concerns as their neighbors to the north.
Battelle spokesman T.R. Massey said during Friday’s interview that the borehole field test is not “a fuse to a bomb,” as was perceived by the communities in North Dakota and South Dakota. “This experiment wasn’t going to lead to that community being the final repository for nuclear inventory that America needs to deal with,” Massey said.
Winberg said the project’s failures do not dampen the importance of America’s nuclear waste storage problem. An estimated 74,000 metric tons of spent fuel has accumulated at about 100 American nuclear sites around the country, resulting from DOE’s failure to take title to the waste by 1998, as laid out in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
“We’ve got nuclear waste around the country, and the current method for managing that nuclear waste is not sustainable, so the country, and I’d argue, the world, needs to find a better way to do it,” Winberg said. “(Boreholes) might be one way.”
A DOE spokesman said by email Thursday that the success of any future borehole project “depends on strong government and public stakeholder engagement that also provides evidence of significant support in advance of a site selection.”
“The current contract does not provide a strong enough framework for ensuring that engagement and support,” the spokesman continued. “A new solicitation provides us an opportunity to strengthen that framework and apply the lessons we have learned.”
DOE has not set an exact date for solicitation for bids, and it’s unclear whether the project will retain the same five-year, $35 million scope. Winberg said he believes DOE will most likely require some level of community participation from bidders. Whether that will require teams to have permits in place is unclear, he said, adding that Battelle will likely submit another proposal.
“I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t keep the team together and review the next round and make a decision after we read it,” Winberg said.
