Jeremy L. Dillon
WC Monitor
4/17/2015
House lawmakers are seeking more definitive answers from the Department of Energy regarding its decision to separate commercial and defense high-level radioactive waste into two repositories, sending a letter Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz this week. Following the Department’s announcement last month that it planned to “de-comingle” the two waste streams, some House lawmakers were concerned that the decision could be a distraction away from DOE’s responsibilities to dispose of commercial waste. The bi-partisan letter, signed by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.), posed a series of questions aimed at discovering DOE’s motivation for the decision and plan of action going forward, such as cost estimates, timelines, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission involvement in licensing.
At the center of the lawmakers’ concerns is what they say is DOE’s disregard for previous work on a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain. “This latest determination is a significant change from the bipartisan, 30 year nuclear waste management policy in which both defense waste and commercial spent nuclear fuel are jointly disposed in a permanent repository located at Yucca Mountain, Nevada,” the two wrote in their letter. “The determination is based on an analysis of six factors identified in the [Nuclear Waste Policy Act]: cost efficiency, health and safety, regulation, transportation, public acceptability, and national security. The administration’s reassessment of these factors is based on underlying assumptions that appear to disregard the existing work that has been accomplished to date on a permanent repository.”
The lawmakers requested a response by the end of the month, and according to a DOE spokesperson, DOE is reviewing the letter. “The Department has received the letter and is reviewing it,” the spokesperson said.
DOE Would Separate Defense Waste From Commercial
The issue of co-mingling deals primarily with whether defense-related high-level waste and commercial spent fuel should continue to be managed together and ultimately go into the same repository. Of the current supply of DOE-responsible waste that would go into a repository, defense waste constitutes 15 percent of the total inventory, according to a DOE official. One of the major reasons cited for the separation is the changes that have taken place between now and the 1980s, when the policy of managing both types of waste together was originally established. Both types of material had been planned to be comingled together in the now shuttered Yucca Mountain geological waste repository, but by separating the two, the Department of Energy would not be limited by the parameters of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and have more flexibility in design and implementation, which could keep costs down, a DOE official said last month.
Upton: Move Could ‘Delay a Solution for Years to Come’
At the time of the announcement, Upton criticized DOE for the change. “Doing so is likely to cast aside the Yucca site with years of work and billions of dollars spent,” Upton said in a statement last month. “We passed bipartisan legislation some 30 years ago, and starting from step one looking for another site seems likely to delay a solution for years to come.”
