The House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee voted Thursday to reauthorize the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state and instruct the Government Accountability Office to prepare a report on radioactive waste at the site.
The bill passed on a voice vote is an amended version of legislation forwarded June 27 by the panel’s Environment Subcommittee. The final document, as amended by subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.), no longer designates radioactive waste at the site as defense-related.
While the amended version substituted the GAO report for the defense-related waste designation sought by the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), it did retain his objective to increase the site’s funding to $75 million annually through fiscal 2028, starting immediately. The Energy Department’s fiscal 2019 budget request for West Valley cleanup was over $60 million.
The West Valley measure was among a dozen pieces of legislation considered during the markup session. No date has been set for the full House to vote on the bill.
Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) successfully attached his own amendment Thursday, with the support of Shimkus, reducing the timeline for the GAO to issue the report from 24 to 18 months. The amendment also said the GAO should record the “origin” of the waste in addition to its volume and type.
Tonko hopes the legislation will be a step toward DOE reconsideration of waste classification at West Valley. The Democrat said hoped “we will continue to work together to address the remaining unsettled aspects of the West Valley issues in the future.”
The original Reed version would have designated the site’s waste as coming from “atomic energy defense activities” as defined by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
The West Valley Demonstration Project occupies about 200 acres of the 3,300-acre Western New York Nuclear Service Center. From 1966 to 1972 the privately operated Nuclear Fuel Services operated a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at the site. The Energy Department says the waste processing was not defense-related. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which controls the property, argues much of the nuclear fuel reprocessed at West Valley came from defense reactors at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The West Valley Demonstration Project Act of 1980 made the Energy Department responsible for decontamination and decommissioning of structures at the facility but did not require the agency to address long-term disposal of the nuclear waste.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 put DOE in charge of planning, designing, and operating a federal repository for high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel, which was later designated as Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, which remains undeveloped.
There are 278 casks of high-level radioactive waste now on an interim storage pad at West Valley that await construction of a federal repository. Shimkus, a major Yucca Mountain supporter, has said without a federal repository West Valley will remain the de facto interim storage site indefinitely.
Likewise, NYSERDA General Counsel Noah Shaw told the subcommittee in May there is a separate tranche of 34,000 cubic feet of what the state considers transuranic waste, which is stranded at West Valley with no clear path to permanent disposal. This waste has similar radioactive characteristics as the defense-related TRU waste disposed of at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
“The basic premise is who ends up paying for this, and it’s not a small cost,” Shimkus said Thursday of West Valley’s orphan waste situation.
A NYSERDA official said Thursday the state is happy to see West Valley land federal funding for another 10 years. “However, NYSERDA is disappointed that Congress chose not to resolve the question of the defense origin of the waste at the West Valley site.”
The Energy Department last provided the New York organization with an estimate for West Valley waste disposal costs about 20 years ago, and the $68 million estimate “has not updated the calculation since then despite numerous requests, including requests from members of Congress at this spring’s hearing on the matter,” the NYSERDA representative said.
