Butte County, Idaho sued Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in federal court this week over continued spent nuclear fuel storage at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory.
The county says DOE should bear the “social” and “economic” costs of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) serving as a “default repository” for nuclear waste from entities such as the U.S. Navy and a commercial nuclear plant in Pennsylvania where a partial-reactor meltdown occurred.
Until DOE catalogs the impacts, INL should not receive any more shipments of Naval spent fuel and there should be no more license extensions for the Three-Mile Island-2 spent fuel pad at the laboratory, according to the complaint.
A DOE spokesperson declined comment, directing inquiries to the Department of Justice.
DOE provides interim storage for about 325 metric tons of spent fuel at INL but is not meeting obligations under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which can include “impact” payments to communities, according to the suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Idaho.
The suit comes as “DOE has offered funding to communities who are merely willing to participate in a discussion about hosting an interim storage facility, which DOE has no current statutory authority to establish or operate,” according to the document.
The Washington, D.C.-based Energy Communities Alliance said in a Wednesday press release, the lawsuit is a sign of local government “frustration” with the feds over nuclear waste. Butte County is home to more than half of the 890-square-mile federal property.
Butte County provides a slew of services benefitting INL, including planning for transportation, infrastructure, law enforcement, fire-fighting and emergency services, according to the 49-page document.
Further, the county’s “culture and economic livelihood is now inextricably linked,” to INL and “continues to be a staunch supporter” of the lab, according to the filing.
Planning for a high-level waste site in Nevada “was effectively terminated in 2010, when DOE attempted to withdraw its Yucca Mountain license application,” according to the suit, which adds that electric utilities no longer pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund following a court decision. The fund, however, has a balance of about $45 billion, with interest adding about $1.5-billion annually.
“INL is operated by a private contractor and the contract is administered and supervised by DOE,” the county said in the lawsuit. “All land, buildings, and most materials and equipment at INL are owned by DOE, but utilized by the contractor, and are exempt from local taxation.”
Battelle Energy Alliance runs the lab for DOE while another contractor, Jacobs-led Idaho Environmental Coalition, is responsible for nuclear cleanup and protection of the Snake River Aquifer.
A Fluor affiliate oversees a naval reactor program at INL and management of 27 metric tons of U.S. Navy spent fuel. Although the Navy fuel has been moved from wet-to-dry storage under a consent decree, DOE “has yet to reveal any plan whatsoever for removal from Idaho and has only increased its plans for permanent storage in Idaho.”
In 2023, the Navy anticipates transporting 1.8 metric ton of spent fuel to INL for interim storage via eight rail shipments, Butte County said. In addition, DOE and the Navy plan to rely on the storage capacity at INL to plan for future Navy reactor decommissioning projects, according to the complaint.
Likewise, DOE has no plans for permanent disposal of 139 metric tons of spent fuel from Three Mile Island Unit 2, according to the suit.
Along the way, the feds did extend by 20 years, the prior March 2019 expiration date for the INL Three Mile Island spent fuel. The spent fuel facility “is not located next to the Forrestal Building in Washington D.C. where DOE would be free from the need for state or local government cooperation.”
Until the late 1970s, spent nuclear fuel was reprocessed to separate and recover usable fissile material, such as enriched uranium, according to the suit. But that practice was halted when the administration of then-President Jimmy Carter “ended the reprocessing industry in the U.S. which increased the demand for storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel.”
Congress, in a 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, selected Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as the site for a deep geological repository for high-level radioactive waste, the county said in the document.
“Congress appropriated funds from the Nuclear Waste Fund to DOE for payments to the state of Nevada … even though Yucca Mountain has never become operational and contains no spent nuclear fuel,” according to the complaint. This is in addition to payments-in-lieu-of-taxes issued to Nye County, Nev.
