Although federal attempts to site an interim storage facility for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel have yet to succeed, the Department of Energy’s current nuclear power chief thinks that things will shake out differently this time.
“[T]here is something very different now than there has been in the past,” Kathryn Huff, DOE’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy (NE-1), told the Exchange Monitor during a public Q&A session, held virtually Tuesday. “Today, we have Congressional direction, and $20 million in appropriations, to pursue a consent based siting process or interim storage.”
DOE last week rebooted the consent-based siting concept that grew out of the 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, issuing a request for information (RFI) aimed at refining the criteria and process the agency will use to search for a site.
Roughly $20 million in federal funding was set aside for that project in two 2022 appropriations bills, which passed in both the House and the Senate Appropriations Committee over the summer but which have yet to be reconciled by Congress. Meanwhile, a continuing resolution signed last week will stretch federal budgets into mid-February, or through almost half of the current fiscal year.
In addition to the cash available for consent-based siting in the draft fiscal 2022 appropriations bills, Huff said, the Joe Biden administration is well-positioned to conduct a better site search than its predecessors.
“[T]his administration has an even stronger emphasis on equity and environmental justice … around things like the processes by which we make decisions like [interim storage siting],” Huff said. “And that kind of embedded interest in energy justice and environmental justice is a new and improved perspective from which we’ll be employing this process.”
Even if the rebooted consent-based siting program eventually prompts a willing host territory to welcome a federally operated interim storage site, Congress will have to change the law to make it legal to build such a depot before there is a permanent repository for spent fuel.
Yucca Mountain in Nevada remains the only congressionally authorized repository, but it was mothballed by the Barack Obama administration in 2011 following political pressure from the Silver State’s congressional delegation. Continued Nevada politicking from 2017 to 2019 short-circuited the Donald Trump administration’s attempts to license Yucca, and the Biden administration began its time in office saying it would not build a repository at Yucca.
Huff told Exchange Monitor Tuesday she didn’t know whether Congress would get on board in the event DOE’s interim storage inquiry unearths a potential host community. However, Huff said that in her experience “Congress has been very helpful in their interest in this program, particularly because it is a response to a congressional direction.”
“So they, I think, are hoping for its success in general,” Huff said.
