The Department of Energy requested $10 million to fund local and tribal participation in the agency’s quest to site and eventually build a federally operated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, according to a detailed fiscal year 2023 budget request released late last week.
For the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, DOE says it wants some $53 million for its interim storage efforts, and that it wants the funds given to the Office of Nuclear Energy’s Integrated Waste Management Systems subprogram, part of the Fuel Cycle R&D program.
That does not allow for a neat comparison with the 2022 interim storage appropriation of $20 million, which Congress in the 2022 omnibus appropriations bill passed in early March kept in the Nuclear Waste Disposal account within Nuclear Energy’s Interim Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight program.
To reach $53 million, DOE’s latest budget request proposed moving $35 million to the Integrated Waste Management Systems subprogram from the Nuclear Waste Disposal account. Integrated Waste Management Systems, under the 2022 omnibus, had a budget of about $18 million. The $35 million DOE wants to move over from the disposal account would include the $10 million reserved for local and tribal groups and the remaining $25 million is not dramatically higher than the 2022 interim storage appropriation of $20 million.
The 2023 request, DOE said, reflects “a ramp up of activities to support effective implementation of consolidated interim storage for the nation’s nuclear waste, including support for working collaboratively with the public, communities, stakeholders, and governments at the Tribal, state, and local levels.”
DOE asked for a similar interim-storage funding shuffle in 2022, but Congress said no in the omnibus, keeping the funds inside the Nuclear Waste Disposal account.
The proposed $10 million carve-out for locals in 2023 would be used for “early-phase grant funding” for interested host communities to explore the issue, the budget request said. The agency has been planning that move for some time, even though it can’t legally break ground on an interim storage site until a permanent repository exists.
With Yucca Mountain more or less dead in the water, DOE has acknowledged that Congress will have to change the law before the agency can build or operate an interim storage site.
Meanwhile for 2023, DOE also requested increased funding for spent fuel transport development: acquiring storage casks and preparing a full-scale accident test for such systems.
