DOE spent fuel official says industry should back independent waste agency

A bill that would create a nuclear waste agency outside the Department of Energy has “good bones” and could be a rallying point for the nuclear industry, a federal official said Wednesday.

The bill, filed Sept. 24 by Reps. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) and August Pfleuger (R-Texas), is the latest legislative pitch to remove management of spent nuclear fuel from DOE’s mission, and Paul Murray, DOE’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and high level waste disposition, said in a webinar he is “hoping it’s something industry can consolidate around.”

Murray spoke during a public webinar, hosted by DOE, alongside some of his staff from the spent fuel office.

“We are doing as much as we can with the existing authorization and the existing funding to demonstrate that we’re moving,” Murray said on the webinar. “Now it’s really time for politicians to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.”

The amended Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the current federal law governing storage of spent fuel, forbids the Department of Energy from taking custody of spent fuel until it builds a permanent storage facility for nuclear waste. Efforts to do that got scuttled in 2010 with the political death of Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev.

DOE is also prohibited from building an interim storage facility for nuclear waste until it first builds a permanent repository, but the agency is nevertheless taking steps to design an interim storage site.

On Wednesday’s webinar, Erica Bickford, director of DOE’s office of storage and transportation, said the agency planned to release a request for proposals to design the federal interim storage site in “around 12 months.”

DOE started doing its market research for the federal interim storage facility this year. Responses to that request for information were due in September. The agency got several responses and is reviewing them, Bickford said. The agency might conduct an interim storage industry day in the spring, she said.

Whether that happens depends, among other things, on whether the administration of President-elect Donald Trump (R), who will take office Jan. 20, allows DOE to continue its effort to build an interim storage site.

“I’m hoping the next administration…will be supportive of what we’re doing,” Murray said during the webinar. However, he said, “I have no evidence for this.”