The Department of Energy’s goal of establishing a “clean energy standard” for zero-carbon sources of electricity will ensure that demand for nuclear power stays high in the face of mounting plant closures, the Secretary of Energy said this week.
“The number one solution the [Joe Biden] administration believes is very important for nuclear’s future is to ensure that demand for nuclear stays high — and that would be in the efforts related to a clean energy standard as part of the American Jobs Plan,” said Jennifer Granholm at the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s FY2022 DOE budget request hearing.
Even as Granholm spoke to the subcommittee, DOE rolled out a new program aiming to reduce the volume of spent nuclear fuel produced by advanced reactors. The new program, “Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactor Disposal Systems” (ONWARDS), will be part of DOE’s existing Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and get up to $40 million in funding from the department, the agency said.
Keeping nuclear plants open is critical to the administration’s goal of developing advanced nuclear technologies, Granholm said Wednesday.
The Indian Point plant in New York went offline in April and three more plants are set to shut down in 2021. The Energy Information Administration forecast in January that nuclear plant closures will represent the biggest share of generating capacity lost across all sectors this year.
Two of the plants scheduled to close this year — Byron and Dresden in Illinois — are in Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s (R-Ill.) district, he told Granholm Wednesday. Granholm said she personally called Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) about the issue, and that DOE supports “efforts at the state level” to keep plants open. Illinois is currently considering a bailout for its struggling nuclear plants.
Meanwhile, ONWARDS will address “challenges posed by the limited disposal options for spent nuclear fuel through the development of novel processes and applications at the start of a fuel cycle that prevents the formation of nuclear waste,” DOE said in a press release.
The program’s “proactive” research will aim for a tenfold reduction in advanced reactor waste volumes, DOE said. That goal will be accomplished through improvements in fuel recycling and sensor technologies as well as through the development of “high-performance waste forms” that remain safe and stable in storage, the release said.
As the federal government explores ways to manage advanced nuclear waste streams, it has yet to designate a permanent site to dispose of the around 90,000 tons of spent fuel currently stranded at existing nuclear power plants nationwide.
The Biden administration has said it will not pursue a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and that instead it will begin work on a federal interim storage facility for spent fuel somewhere else. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said May 6 that the administration will unveil its strategy “in the coming months.”
