A proposed bill currently awaiting debate in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that would create an independent federal agency to oversee the development of nuclear waste storage sites.
The new organization proposed in Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) Nuclear Waste Administration Act would assume all of the nuclear waste management authority given to the Secretary of Energy under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), according to the bill’s text. The independent agency would be responsible for siting, licensing and operating nuclear waste sites.
The proposed agency would be run by a presidentially-appointed administrator, serving for a term of six years, the bill said. The measure also would set up an independent “nuclear waste oversight board” to oversee the new agency and to audit use of the federal Nuclear Waste Fund.
The measure was initially scheduled for debate Thursday during a meeting of the Senate’s energy committee, but the panel didn’t get to it — Manchin, who chairs the committee, was not present Thursday following a COVID-19 diagnosis.
Manchin’s bill is not Congress’s first attempt at standing up a new agency to oversee nuclear waste disposal. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) in 2019 introduced a nearly identical bill that never got a vote in the Senate.
A federal waste management agency could be one way to get around existing restrictions in the NWPA. The nuclear waste law forbids the Department of Energy from taking title to spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear power sites until a permanent repository is active.
The only congressionally-authorized site for such a purpose, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, has been more or less on ice since 2010 after the Barack Obama administration pulled the project’s funding.
Meanwhile, DOE is currently at work trying to site a federal interim storage facility. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff has acknowledged that even if a willing host community for such a project comes forward, NWPA still bars DOE from actually building an interim storage site. Huff told RadWaste Monitor in March that a “TVA-like authority” could help the project move forward.
