The nongovernmental organization representing communities near Department of Energy facilities is urging Senate leaders to commit to ending the federal government’s dithering over building a disposal facility for the nation’s nuclear waste.
The United States holds roughly 100,000 metric tons of waste that by law must go into a permanent repository, which Congress in 1987 designated would be built under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. About 80,000 tons of that is spent fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors, a stockpile that grows by about 2,000 tons annually.
Much of the rest consists of high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. That material remains held on-site at DOE locations including the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina – near communities represented by the Washington, D.C.-based Energy Communities Alliance.
Yucca Mountain is currently allowed only to hold 70,000 metric tons of heavy-metal waste. Under a DOE decision, 63,000 metric tons of that would be commercial material and the remainder defense waste. Disposal of remaining waste would require a second repository or increasing the Nevada site’s maximum allowance.
“Our communities have operated in good faith based on federal law, as codified in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, that the sites would not become permanent waste storage sites, and defense waste would ultimately be disposed of in a geologic repository,” ECA Chair Ron Woody, county executive for Roane County, Tenn., near DOE’s Oak Ridge Site, wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “However, with politics rather than science driving policy, our communities, especially including those around the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York, have become – and look to remain – de facto interim storage sites they were never intended to be.”
The letter, dated Jan. 16, was released Tuesday.
Woody called on Congress to provide funding to complete the long-frozen licensing of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository, “in pursuit of confirming it is safe or even lessons learned, but ultimately to fulfill its commitment to our communities that have long supported the nation’s national security mission.”
The Energy Department filed its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008 during the George W. Bush administration, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later. The Trump administration has proposed funding for licensing in its last two budget proposals, but has been shot down both times by Congress. Issue observers have said they expect the White House to try again in its fiscal 2020 budget plan, which could be released in February.
There have been some signs that Congress might this year be more amenable to funding Yucca Mountain. For example: Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the Senate’s lead appropriator for DOE and the NRC, said in 2019 there should be funding for both the permanent repository and interim storage sites that could hold the spent fuel until the final disposal facility is ready. The NRC is considering license applications for two such storage operations, in Texas and New Mexico, which could expedite DOE’s efforts to meet the 1982 mandate from Congress to begin removing radioactive waste from generator sites.
“Maybe there is additional pressure, with a lot of the spent nuclear fuel being stored in locations where politicians are concerned about it,” Kara Colton, ECA director of nuclear energy programs, said in a telephone interview Thursday. She acknowledged, though, “it’s so easy to kick Yucca Mountain down the road.”
Energy Communities Alliance officials are due to be on Capitol Hill next week to make their case, Colton said.
