The Department of Energy expects to begin awarding funds from its multi-million dollar interim storage funding program by midyear, an agency spokesperson said Tuesday.
Roughly $26 million is up for grabs in DOE’s interim storage funding opportunity announcement, aimed at bringing together communities and other stakeholders to hash out how the department should go about siting a federal interim storage facility for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel inventory.
Tuesday was the deadline for applications for that funding — now, a DOE spokesperson told the Exchange Monitor Tuesday, the agency plans to start announcing awards at some time “in the May-June timeframe.”
That gives the agency up to five months to review submissions and select awardees — the agency has said it could choose up to 16.
Unveiled in September, the interim storage award would provide recipients with funding for around 18 to 24 months. No single award would be greater than $2 million or smaller than $1 million, DOE has said.
At an industry conference in Virginia Jan. 24, DOE’s acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition Kim Petry told the Exchange Monitor that the department staff in charge of evaluating awardees would not know right away exactly who had applied for funding.
“The procurement cycle in the federal government is like this big black box,” Petry said. “The people who actually make the decisions at the end of the process and don’t know anything about the beginning of the process.”
DOE procurement staff will evaluate “whether all the applications have met the minimum criteria,” Petry said. “After that process, the full team meets to decide on each individual application, and make a recommendation.”
The department announced in January that it had increased the total award value to $26 million from $16 million, due to additional federal appropriations greenlit under December’s congressional omnibus spending package.
