When it comes to potential host communities for a future federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, the Department of Energy plans to cast a wide net, the agency’s acting nuclear waste chief told members of a California decommissioning advisory board this week.
DOE’s November request for information (RFI) on federal interim storage is helping the agency “figure out how to do this in the most effective way that is the most inclusive and responsive to all the communities in the United States who may be interested in hosting,” said Kim Petry, acting assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition within the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE), during a virtual meeting Thursday of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) community advisory panel.
The RFI, which is primarily aimed at collecting community input on how the feds should go about siting a federal interim storage site, doesn’t eliminate any potential host communities, Petry told the panel. “[T]here may be places in the United States that can’t host an interim storage facility,” she said, “but we’re not ruling anything out.”
Petry reiterated the Joe Biden administration’s commitment to pursue a consent-based approach for siting such a facility.
“We want to be open and inclusive and have conversations with all the communities that have any interest whatsoever,” Petry said. “[T]his RFI is to help us figure out how to put that process together in the most flexible, adaptive and inclusive way.”
Southern California Edison, which is decommissioning the SONGS plant, has been particularly vocal in pressuring the federal government to tackle the issue of nuclear waste disposal. The utility in March 2021 formed Action for Spent Fuel Solutions Now, an ever-growing coalition of California communities and stakeholders to accomplish that objective. The Pendleton, Calif., nuclear plant has around 123 canisters of spent fuel currently stored onsite at a dry storage pad.
Meanwhile, NE chief Kathryn Huff told RadWaste Monitor in January that responses to the RFI have been rolling in and are “creative.” March 4 is the deadline for interested stakeholders to submit comments to DOE.
Currently, there are no federally-operated sites accepting shipments of spent nuclear fuel from power plants. The only location congressionally approved for such a task, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, remains on ice after the Biden administration committed not to fund the site for anything more than physical security in the 2022 fiscal year.
