Among the many differences the House and Senate must settle before they can pass a permanent 2024 federal budget are competing policies about interim storage of spent nuclear fuel.
Senate appropriators want to change the law to let the Department of Energy build a pilot interim storage site. House appropriators say nothing about a federal site but want to block further progress on commercially operated interim storage sites.
Factoring in scheduled recesses, Congress has only about two weeks worth of work days to compromise on that issue, and many, many others, before federal funding for DOE and other agencies runs out again after March 1. House Speaker Rep. Michael Johnson (R-La.) has said there is time to pass 12 appropriations bills to fund the federal government instead of one omnibus bill.
The House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act of 2024, which passed the Republican-controlled chamber in October on essentially a party line vote, would prevent DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from spending any money on private interim storage sites not already storing fuel.
“No federal monies shall be expended in furtherance of any agreement among private entities for consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel that is not specifically authorized under federal law until such time that host state and local governments and any affected Indian tribes have formalized their consent,” reads the House’s bill.
The Senate energy and water act is silent on commercial interim storage sites, the sort proposed by Holtec International in New Mexico and in Texas by the Orano-Waste Control Specialists joint venture Interim Storage Partners, but calls for what is essentially a major amendment to U.S. nuclear waste law.
The Senate bill, sent to the chamber floor in July, says that the Secretary of Energy would be allowed “in the current fiscal year and subsequent fiscal years, to conduct a pilot program to license, construct, and operate one or more Federal consolidated storage facilities to provide interim storage as needed for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, with priority for storage given to spent nuclear fuel located on sites without an operating nuclear reactor.”
Work would start quickly under the Senate bill, which would give DOE about four months to solicit bids for cooperative agreements to obtain NRC licenses for the facility or facilities and demonstrate safe transportation of spent nuclear fuel. In the Senate bill, DOE would need consent from a state’s governor, local governments and “each affected Indian tribe” before siting an interim storage site.
The prospects of any of this becoming law are dim, the head of a community advocacy group for areas near DOE sites told RadWaste Monitor on Thursday.
“We do not expect the language to move as part of the appropriations bill for fiscal year 2024,” Seth Kirshenberg, director of the Washington-based Energy Communities Alliance (ECA), wrote in an email. “The Senate language has a lot of the components that ECA communities want including a clear role for the host local government. But we have several questions, such as ‘who proposes the site?’ We really like the fact that the funds from the Nuclear Waste Policy Act can be used.”
