The Department of Energy issued a new request for proposals (RFP) Monday for its deep borehole nuclear waste storage field test, which will require that contractors secure local support before the drilling contract is awarded.
Associate Deputy Assistant Energy Secretary for Fuel Cycle Technologies Andrew Griffith said Wednesday that the new RFP leaves the department with a plan B if the job favorite falters.
The department began drawing up a new RFP in July after the original prime contractor Battelle Memorial Institute over several months failed to secure two separate sites in North Dakota and South Dakota for the estimated $35 million, five-year project. Plans drew severe backlash from locals in both states who shared concerns that a successful field test would lead to actual nuclear waste storage, even though the dry test run would not involve any actual nuclear material. Battelle first walked away from plans in Pierce County, N.D. in March, before abandoning the project altogether in July following another setback in in Spink County, S.D.
“While our expectations are that all of the proposals are going to be quality and that they could all succeed, having some competition could help and also gives us a plan B if the team out front doesn’t stay out front,” Griffith said Wednesday at the Westin Washington, D.C., City Center Hotel during a meeting with the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
The Obama administration is exploring the borehole storage method — which would involve burying spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in crystalline rock formations — as one potential alternative to canceled repository plans at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The new solictation requires that potential contractors secure all regulatory approvals before the drilling contract is awarded. Griffith said the department anticipates giving two or more awards for the initial work before narrowing the list to one for the drilling portion of the project. Griffith said the new RFP requires the contractor to let the community know it is “part of the team.” He also said the failures in the Dakotas didn’t demonstrate a mistrust in DOE, but in the federal government in general.
DOE has laid out the project in five phases: (1) secure a site, while engaging the public, (2) complete all regulatory approvals, (3) propose a final drilling and test plan, (4) drill and close out the site, and (5) manage and maintain the site.
The project would involve drilling an 8.5-inch-diameter characteristic borehole 3 miles deep in the ground to test the feasibility of the rock formation and surrounding site. DOE would then decide whether to drill a 17-inch diameter field test borehole for the surrogate container. DOE’s anticipated start date for phase 1 is January 2017, four months later than Battelle had planned to break ground.
Battelle spokesman T.R. Massey said by email Tuesday that the company is reviewing the RFP. Given Battelle’s history on the project, he said, the company is “obviously interested.” Other prominent contractors could not be reached for comment.
DOE acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy John Kotek, who also appeared for the meeting Wednesday, said the borehole’s stumbling blocks serve as learning opportunities for the department’s consent-based siting approach in dealing with America’s nuclear waste storage problem.
“One of the things you see in the new RFP is we’re asking these contractors to work with the host communities to figure out what sort of things do they need to make this more advantageous to them, more worth their while for getting involved,” said Kotek, who has lead public outreach for the consent-based siting program, traveling to various public meetings around the country, since the department formally began the program in late 2015.
He was asked during the meeting about DOE partnering with private entities for consolidated interim spent fuel storage efforts in West Texas and New Mexico, which Waste Control Specialists and Holtec International are leading, respectively. Those plans will likely fall under the Obama administration’s consent-based siting strategy, which envisions operation of a pilot storage facility for waste from decommissioned nuclear sites by 2021; one or more larger, interim facilities by 2025; and finally at least one permanent geologic repository by 2048.
Kotek said private partnerships for interim storage is something DOE needs to work out “to ensure that what we’re after is willing and informed host states that can provide us a durable solution to the problem of storage of disposal.” But he stopped short of saying DOE will in fact contract with those companies.
“That would be an important question we would have to answer,” Kotek said. “We’re just not at the point where we have an answer for that.”
The Nuclear Energy Institute in its public comments submitted on the consent-based process to DOE urged the department separate itself from the private storage efforts in Texas and New Mexico, stating that it might delay or unnecessarily burden WCS’ and Holtec’s projects.
