Bipartisan legislation introduced this week would require the federal government to compensate 13 communities around the nation that are left with spent nuclear reactor fuel in storage in the absence of a permanent solution.
The funds would be at the amount set per kilogram in the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which limited annual impact assistance payments to a state or local government unit of no more than $15 per kilogram of spent fuel. The money would be appropriated from the General Fund and would be capped off at seven years, Rep. Bob Dold (R-Ill.) said in Capitol Hill testimony Thursday.
The annual payments could total $92.9 million annually, based on 6.2 million kilograms (6,196.4 metric tons) of spent fuel stored at closed nuclear power plants near communities in California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
The money is due to jurisdictions that are now stuck with spent nuclear fuel at closed facilities that are no longer providing tax revenue or jobs but that cannot be redeveloped while the fuel remains, according to Dold. That includes Zion, Ill., a city in his congressional district and home to the Zion Nuclear Power Station that closed in 1998.
“The political failure to move ahead with Yucca Mountain has created an unfortunate situation for Zion and communities like it across the country,” the lawmaker said in his prepared remarks for a hearing on the suspended Yucca Mountain geologic repository before the House Energy and Commerce Environment and the Economy Subcommittee. “These communities are carrying, uncompensated, the burden of our entire country to spent nuclear fuel. … While the best solution is still to find a way to make sure spent nuclear fuel is removed from these communities, in the interim, my bill is a common-sense proposal to help compensate these communities and defray some of the impacts associated with storing spent nuclear fuel there.”
The bill, cosponsored with Reps. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), has been referred to the Energy and Commerce Committee.
There is limited time left in this session for passage of legislation. Congress after next week will adjourn for the party conventions and then the summer recess. Lawmakers will return to Capitol Hill in September, before decamping again in October until after the November election.
Dold joined other House lawmakers and officials from Nevada before the E&C subcommittee to discuss challenges facing nuclear waste, including transport to long-term storage and what it might take for Nevadans to accept the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada. The hearing is part of an ongoing process intended to enable the committee to develop comprehensive legislation on used fuel management, according to panel Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.).
The Obama administration in 2009 took Yucca “off the table” – in the words of then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu – moving ahead with a blue-ribbon study of U.S. nuclear waste storage and eventually into a “consent-based” storage siting plan that would separate commercial and defense waste. This program calls for establishing pilot and interim consolidated storage sites before 2025 and then one or more permanent geologic repositories by 2048.
A federal appeals court, though, in 2013 ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to continue licensing activities for the Yucca site, despite DOE’s request to withdraw its application. Shimkus on Thursday made clear that in the least he expects Yucca to receive its operations license: “We’re not here to pre-judge the outcome of the process but rather discuss what Congress should consider when the license is issued.”
Dold joined a number of House lawmakers from Nevada, along with local and state officials, in testifying on Yucca before the committee. In her opening statement, Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) rejected the idea that Nevada could receive any benefit that would make it worth the state hosting more than 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel shipped in from outside its borders. “On behalf of three out of four Nevadans who oppose Yucca Mountain I’m here to say we cannot and will not be bought off,” Titus said, reminding her colleagues that Nevadans had once been told above-ground nuclear tests were also safe.
But other speakers on both sides of the dais discussed Yucca in terms clearly indicating they believe the project could be revived following the end of the Obama administration in January and the accompanying retirement of longtime repository opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Nye County Commissioner Dan Schinhofen laid out a two-part package of benefits that he said would be needed to compensate local jurisdictions for use of their land for nuclear waste and to support state and Nye County mitigation efforts for “adverse impacts” from the Yucca Mountain project.
Benefits in the first stage, which would commence upon renewal of the site licensing process, would include provision of resources to enable state and local governments to monitor and participate in the licensing process, to enable Nye County to prepare its infrastructure for resumed construction of the site, transferring federal land to Nevada and affected counties, and payments to the state and local governments for any lost taxes or other revenue sources.
The second benefits package for construction and operation of the facility could be developed by a task force of officials from DOE, the NRC, Nevada, Nye County, and other local governments and Native American tribes. Their proposal would be delivered to Congress within two years.
The upside would extend well beyond Nevada, the commissioner said. The Department of Energy, for example, would not have to spend money to study other potential locations and could put an end to the lawsuits filed by reactor operators stuck with the fuel.
“I am optimistic that at least we will have a fair chance for appropriations and needed legislation when senator Reid retires and the administration changes,” Schinhofen told RadWaste Monitor by email following the hearing.
