The Department of Energy’s nuclear waste management system saw a proposed funding increase for 2023, due in part to its absorption of the agency’s interim storage activities, according to the agency’s latest public budget document.
For the Office of Nuclear Energy’s (NE) Integrated Waste Management System, DOE requested roughly $53 million for the upcoming fiscal year according to an agency budget breakdown — around a $35 million increase from the $18 million or so the program got as part of a bipartisan omnibus spending package passed in March.
That increase accounts for the inclusion of interim storage funding, a DOE spokesperson told Exchange Monitor via email Wednesday. In the previous fiscal year, the roughly $20 million in spending for the agency’s ongoing interim storage inquiry was part of NE’s Nuclear Waste Fund budget. As for the remaining $15 million increase, the spokesperson said more details “will be provided once the FY23 budget is released.”
DOE is planning a competitive funding opportunity for communities interested in learning more about hosting a federal interim storage facility, even though the agency legally cannot build such a facility until it builds a permanent nuclear-waste repository, such as the congressionally authorized but mothballed Yucca Mountain site.
For the interim storage site, the Joe Biden administration is fine-tuning the consent-based siting approach the Barack Obama administration recommended in the 2012 export report, which the Obama White House commissioned after it defunded the Yucca Mountain licensing process and effectively killed the site.
The Biden administration in November put out a request for information seeking public input about the sort of issues that should be addressed in a consent-based siting process. The agency is now reading through more than 200 comments it received.
