Brian Bradley
RW Monitor
11/13/2015
An Energy Department solicitation for bidders to build an interim consolidated spent fuel storage facility could draw eight to 10 companies, which could push back the start of the facility’s construction, but could also open a path for defining consent-based storage, a Bipartisan Policy Center nuclear waste specialist said during a presentation Thursday in Washington. “I truly believe they should put the opportunity out there for people to come in and say, ‘Yeah, we’re interested in having a conversation that will move forward,’ which leads you then to defining ‘consent-based,’” BPC Senior Advisor Tim Frazier said during a presentation on nuclear waste at the center’s office in Washington.
Frazier said it is difficult to define “consent-based” on a national scale, because it entails different elements in different communities, yet added that BPC’s Nuclear Waste Council will develop a set of recommendations on what “’consent-based’ might look like, and then who would be involved and how it might operate. Proper balance of economic advantage and upholding economic justice will be key, he said. “It’s going to be a sticky wicket to get through; we’re going to have to get through it, I think,” Frazier added. “It’s just a matter of a lot of time, unfortunately more time, put into that process to try to define it.”
The Obama administration halted work on the planned waste depository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and has instead promoted “consent-based” siting. In that context, and with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant not accepting waste at the moment, the Texas and New Mexico state governments are the only two in the nation that have expressly indicated interest in hosting a potential interim storage facility. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) voiced support for efforts to bring a spent nuclear fuel consolidated interim storage facility to southeastern New Mexico in an April 10 letter to Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. Last year, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus (R) both backed looking at the potential of hosting an interim storage facility in their state. Straus has asked state lawmakers to consider the logistics and economic impact of potentially hosting a high-level radioactive waste disposal site or interim storage facility, and Perry charged the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to prepare a report on the history of spent fuel disposal and lessons learned from previous attempts. Citing this state-level support, Texas-based Waste Control Specialists announced earlier this year its intention to construct a commercial interim storage facility by 2020.
