In lame duck pro-nuke plan, White House endorses geologic disposal, generic repository update

In a 37-page framework for meeting its commitment to triple U.S. nuclear energy generation by 2050, the White House on Tuesday devoted about one page to disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

The framework was a sort of deliverable that followed the U.S.’ 2023 pledge at the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference. Twenty four other countries also pledged to triple nuclear generation at the meeting.

In the White House’s framework, the lame-duck administration of President Joe Biden (D) wrote that there remains “broad international scientific consensus that consent-based siting of a deep geologic repository is the safest and most secure method for spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste disposal,” and that the U.S.’ “[g]eneric repository standards would also need to be updated to support the use of a deep geologic repository.”

Current U.S. standards for deep geologic repositories are all tailored to the moribund Yucca Mountain project, which has become politically toxic to both of the major political parties. Then-president Donald Trump (R), who was reelected Nov. 5, tried and failed to get Yucca started again after his predecessor, President Barack Obama (D) put the project on ice.

Generic standards give policy makers rules for deep geologic repositories that are untethered from Yucca Mountain. The nuclear industry has pressed the steward of those standards, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to start work on revisions.

EPA has said it would not overhaul the standards unless Congress required the agency to do so.