Public input about the Department of Energy’s proposed consent-based siting process for a federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel could be published by March 31, an agency official said this week.
A full collection of responses DOE received as part of its November request for information (RFI) should be available “by the end of the month,” said Natalia Saraeva, an advisor at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory working on the initiative, at a webinar hosted Wednesday by nuclear professional organization the American Nuclear Society.
The RFI, which was aimed at collecting input on how the agency should go about siting a federal interim storage facility, received more than 200 comments by the time it closed March 4, said Saraeva, a former staff director on the Barack Obama administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.
Kathryn Huff, the Joe Biden administration’s nominee to lead DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week that a summary of RFI responses was “forthcoming.”
After DOE finishes reviewing comments on its RFI, the agency has said it would next provide a funding opportunity to potential host sites to explore interim storage. Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition Kim Petry told RadWaste Monitor March 8 at the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix that DOE was still in the “development phases” of that step, but that cash for the funding opportunity would come from the roughly $20 million DOE got in 2021 for its interim storage inquiry.
While details on the feds’ interim storage program remain scarce, private companies have taken steps towards a possible short-term solution to the U.S.’s spent fuel dilemma.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September licensed Interim Storage Partners, a Waste Control Specialists-Orano USA joint venture, to build a storage facility in Andrews, Texas. Another company, Camden, N.J.-based Holtec International, has its own application out with NRC for a similar site in Eddy County, N.M.
