The head of the lobbying arm for the nuclear energy industry is urging the Trump administration to halt what she called “misleading budget tactics” by its predecessor related to the Nuclear Waste Fund.
The account collected more than $20 billion from nuclear utilities over several decades, with the ultimate intent of paying for a geologic repository for tens of thousands of tons of U.S. spent reactor fuel and high-level waste.
A federal appeals court in November 2013 directed that the Department of Energy stop collecting payments into the fund because it had not met its mandate under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to build that facility. The Obama administration notified Congress in May 2014 that it was formally obeying the court ruling.
“However, despite this ruling, the former administration continued to budget $350 million annually knowing that the receipts would not be collected. The industry believes this inequity must be addressed and corrected,” Nuclear Energy Institute President and CEO Maria Korsnick said in an April 21 letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. “A clear reading of the court decision indicates that there is no basis to budget for collection of the annual fees if there are no funds currently appropriated to implement any program.”
The Nuclear Energy Institute released Korsnick’s letter on April 27. A spokesman said DOE and OMB had not responded as of Thursday. The agencies did not return requests for comment on the matter from RadWaste Monitor.
The Nuclear Waste Fund by last September held $38 billion and was collecting another $1.5 billion in annual interest, Korsnick said. There should be no fee on utilities as long as the fund’s annual investment income remains higher than yearly expenses for the program and until DOE can show that a fee is necessary to cover the life of the program, she added.
Korsnick called for financial support to enable the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s evaluation of DOE’s license application for the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. The regulator should also continue reviewing applications for interim storage sites that would consolidate spent nuclear fuel until the permanent facility is ready some decades from now, she said.
“Interim storage is necessary given the length of time a final repository will take to construct and it will allow decommissioned sites and states to re-purpose the land currently being used for on-site fuel storage,” Korsnick wrote.
Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987 to designate Yucca Mountain as the repository site. Licensing began in 2008, only to be suspended two years later under the Obama administration. However, the Trump administration is seeking $120 million in fiscal 2018 to resume licensing and advance interim storage efforts.
Finally, Korsnick urged Perry and Mulvaney to order a comprehensive evaluation of different means to restructure the Nuclear Waste Fund’s funding mechanism to ensure it can pay for the waste repository. “This review should include providing a credible way to access the fund, such as transitioning the NWF to mandatory spending while still allowing effective oversight from Congress,” she wrote. “Although we fully understand that this would have difficult budget ramifications, industry has acted in good faith throughout the process and we believe this is essential to getting the program back on track.”
