After the summer, DOE could launch a competitive funding opportunity aimed at potential host communities for an interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel, the Secretary of Energy told Senators Thursday.
The award, which the Department of Energy has been planning for some time as part of its quest to site an interim storage facility, should come down in “early fall,” energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said Thursday in a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The funding opportunity announcement should help DOE “understand the needs of communities that might be willing” to host such a site, she said.
Before that can happen, though, DOE has to finish analyzing the 200 or so responses to a November request for information (RFI) from the public about how the government should conduct its search for a federal interim storage site.
Granholm told the Senate energy panel that a summary of that input could be made available “within the next couple of weeks.” A spokesperson for the agency told Exchange Monitor Wednesday that the summary would be published some time this summer.
Even if a willing community comes forward, DOE has acknowledged that federal law would need to change before the agency could actually build a government-owned interim storage site.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act prohibits DOE from building such a facility before a permanent nuclear waste repository exists. The only congressionally-authorized site for such a task, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, remains on ice after the White House refused to fund its licensing or construction in 2022.
“Yucca Mountain is off the table,” Granholm said Thursday. “The question is, are there communities that have openness” to hosting interim storage, she said.
