The Energy Department said recently it had nearly $38 billion in the Nuclear Waste Fund, in the first of what it pledged will be annual summaries of the finances for the federal account intended to pay for the radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
In a letter attached to the summary, DOE Deputy General Counsel Eric Fygi said the department was acceding to the April request for such a “plain-English” summary from the heads of the Nuclear Energy Institute, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, and Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition.
“We agree with you that presenting financial information about the NWF in this format has public value,” according to the June 15 letter, obtained by RadWaste Monitor. “Therefore, the Department intends to publish an updated version of the attached ‘NWF Annual Financial Report Summary’ annually and within a reasonable time following the release of the annual NWF Audit Report and make the summary publically available on the Energy website going forward.”
The organizations requested the summary after DOE’s annual audit was not released on schedule in December, said Rod McCullum, senior director for fuel and decommissioning at NEI, the lobbying arm of the nuclear industry. The one-page document offers both clear figures on the state of the Nuclear Waste Fund and accountability regarding its use, McCullum said.
“We insist that the department continue to be accountable for that money until it’s used for its intended purpose,” he said in a telephone interview. “We will continue to expect them to be open and transparent about the Nuclear Waste Fund.”
The latest full audit of the Nuclear Waste Fund was made public earlier this month. It showed that the Energy Department at the end of fiscal 2017 on Sept. 30 of last year held $44.5 billion in U.S. Treasury securities connected to the Nuclear Waste Fund. The summary lists the balance as of fiscal 2017 at just shy of $37.7 billion. The difference represents unrealized market gains, NEI said, referring questions on specifics to DOE. The Energy Department this week did not respond to a request for detail about the fund summary.
The fund was established under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which directed DOE to establish a permanent repository for disposal of what is now more than 80,000 metric tons of defense and commercial radioactive waste – largely spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power reactors. Nuclear utilities paid into the fund from 1983 to 2014. The fund was primarily to be used by the Department of Energy, which would build the repository, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would provide the necessary license for construction and operations.
From 1983 to fiscal 2017, the Nuclear Waste Fund collected $49.1 billion in total income, according to the DOE summary. That encompassed nearly $21.5 billion in receipts from commercial nuclear generators; over $23.8 billion in interest income, gains, and other revenues; and $3.8 billion from defense nuclear generators – congressional appropriations to pay for disposal of government waste from DOE’s Hanford Site and other generators.
The federal government has spent nearly $11.4 billion from the fund. Of that, $7.5 billion went to Yucca Mountain and other first repository operations – including licensing activities at DOE and the NRC, construction of 7 miles of tunnels at Yucca Mountain, and various scientific research programs to test the site’s suitability to hold nuclear waste, McCullum said. Another $3.7 billion was spent on other waste program activities, including non-Yucca research and transportation projects. The final $109 million paid for early work on siting a second repository, which was cut off in 1987 when Congress ruled that Yucca Mountain would be the sole permanent storage site for radioactive waste.
This week, DOE added links to both the full audit and the summary on the web page for its Office of Standard Contract Management.
In their April 20 letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the leaders of the three organizations noted the federal government had collected tens of billions of dollars ultimately paid by utility ratepayers but that there is still no waste repository.
“At a minimum, DOE should provide an annual plain-English accounting of how the money was collected and spent and how much remains. That NWF reporting should include receipts from commercial and defense nuclear generators, investment income accrued, expenditures for Yucca Mountain and other program activities, and the current balance,” says the letter, signed by NARUC Executive Director Greg White, NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick, and Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition Chair Sarah Hofmann.
The George W. Bush administration Energy Department submitted its license application for Yucca Mountain in 2008, but the Obama administration halted the proceeding two years later. It said Yucca Mountain was an “unworkable” program for waste disposal, and after reviewing the findings of a blue-ribbon commission embarked on a “consent-based” approach to locate separate locations for commercial and defense waste.
That process fell by the wayside as the Trump administration returned to Yucca Mountain. It requested funding to resume licensing in both the current fiscal 2018 and the upcoming fiscal 2019. Congress zeroed out the request in the omnibus spending bill signed into law in March and remains split on the latest proposal – the House actually boosted the proposed funding by $100 million, to $270 million, for DOE and the NRC; the Senate this week approved legislation that offers nothing for Yucca Mountain.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had about $13.5 million available from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the time the Obama administration canceled Yucca Mountain. A federal court in 2013 ordered the agency to sustain the proceeding, and it has since then spent more than $13 million of that balance. More than $11 million was used for three projects: completion of a safety evaluation report on the license application, moving the document database for the Yucca Mountain license review into the NRC’s online documents library, and preparing a supplement to the environmental impact statement for the application.
