The Trump administration Department of Energy has failed to follow through on its commitment to take decisive action on permanent disposal of the nation’s ever-growing stockpile of nuclear waste, the head of a nuclear industry group said in a Jan. 23 letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council Executive Director David Blee reminded Perry that he said during his Senate confirmation hearing in January that it was time to stop “kicking the can down the road” on nuclear waste disposal. His letter notes the $120 million DOE request for fiscal 2018 to resume licensing for the planned Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository in Nevada and start a “robust” program of interim storage of that waste until the permanent site is ready.
Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain as the sole site to be studied for permanent disposal of spent reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The Energy Department submitted its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, but the Obama administration halted the process two years later. The Trump administration has reversed course and moved to revive licensing.
Nonetheless, the Department has given every appearance of late of returning to a business-as-usual approach,” according to Blee’s letter, obtained by RadWaste Monitor. “This is despite mounting Federal taxpayer liabilities approaching $30 billion and approximately 86,000 metric tons of commercial and defense waste stranded at 121 sites in 39 states.”
To illustrate his point, Blee noted that DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCWRM), which was disbanded under the Obama administration, does not show up anywhere in the recently revised departmental organizational structure. While it waits for Congress to approve funding for Yucca Mountain, DOE could demonstrate its seriousness on the matter by reopening OCRWM, nominating someone to lead it, and using $10 million in carryover funding to lay the groundwork for resumption of the licensing process, Blee wrote.
Contacted this week, Blee said he had not received a response from DOE, but that the letter had not specifically requested one.
Congress has so far been divided on funding for Yucca Mountain: The House approved the requested DOE funding in its energy appropriations bill for fiscal 2018, while Senate appropriators offered nothing for the project in corresponding legislation that is still waiting on a floor vote. In the meantime, there is no Yucca money in the stopgap funding measures that have kept the federal government operational in the absence of a full budget four months into the fiscal year.
The Trump administration is scheduled to issue its fiscal 2019 budget plan on Feb. 12. While there has been no confirmation, the common wisdom is that it will seek nuclear waste disposition funding in the ballpark of what was requested for the current budget year, Blee said: That would be somewhere around $120 million for DOE and $30 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would decide whether to license any interim and permanent disposal sites.
Blee noted that the NRC has (under court order) since 2013 been spending its Obama administration carryover from the Nuclear Waste Fund to prepare for the potential resumption of the Yucca Mountain license adjudication. The Energy Department could follow that lead with its own $10 million carryover, he said.
The Energy Department did not respond by deadline to a request for comment on Blee’s letter.
Separately, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners issued a reminder that Wednesday was the 20th anniversary of the Jan. 31, 1998, deadline set by the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act for DOE to begin accepting spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste for disposal. That still has not happened.
The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit represents state public service commissions.
“It has been 36 years since the Nuclear Waste Policy Act became law and 20 years since the government defaulted on its obligation. We still have no nuclear repository, and worse yet, we don’t even have the semblance of a nuclear waste program,” NARUC President John Betkoski III said in a prepared statement. “Taxpayers and ratepayers have poured literally billions into the federal nuclear waste program and the liability costs continue to increase every day we delay. Moreover, the funding process is broken.”
