Nevada’s Commission on Nuclear Projects on Tuesday finalized its biannual report to state lawmakers, which outlines an aggressive strategy in contesting potential resumption of licensing activities for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
The commission was established in 1985 to advise the governor and the Nevada Legislature on radioactive waste disposal activities in the state. Nevada is preparing some 300 legal and technical contentions against the mothballed repository, which appears set to gain new life under the Trump administration.
“Nevada’s licensing team of technical experts and attorneys are preparing extensive contingency plans in anticipation of a restart of NRC’s adjudicatory proceeding. … The coming year will likely present a major new political battlefield for the State of Nevada’s struggle against the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository,” the report reads, citing Trump’s election and the retirement of longtime Yucca opponent Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
The Department of Energy withdrew its Yucca Mountain license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2010, following cancellation orders from the Obama administration.
Specifically, the commission recommended that state lawmakers ensure the Nevada attorney general and Agency for Nuclear Projects have the proper funding needed for the legal battle, though it didn’t designate a specific amount. Efforts would include a massive public information campaign in the “likely event that Congress appropriates new funding for Yucca Mountain licensing.”
The commission described Yucca Mountain as a scientifically and technically unsuitable repository site. The report also cites recent developments that demonstrate the facility is no longer necessary, including joint public-private ventures in consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel, along with a 2016 U.S. Court of Appeals denial of a request to vacate an NRC rule allowing indefinite storage of nuclear waste at American power plants. That decision, the commission said, shows on-site storage of waste at nuclear plants is a safe option. The report includes a long list of recommendations to Gov. Brian Sandoval, who has vehemently opposed the project
“Gov. Sandoval should communicate clearly and unambiguously to the new Administration and to the new Congress, Nevada’s continuing steadfast opposition to any attempt to resurrect the defunct Yucca Mountain project or otherwise bring spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste into Nevada,” the report reads.
The federal government has spent about $15 billion on Yucca Mountain since 1987. The Department of Energy estimated in 2012 that it would cost another $82.5 billion to build, operate, and close the site, for a total cost of about $97 billion.
What exists at Yucca Mountain now is a single 5-mile-long, horseshoe-shaped tunnel allowing access to the subsurface for the purpose of studying geologic and hydrologic conditions underground. In order to store 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, the government would need to build 42 miles of additional tunnels, surface facilities, and more than 300 miles of railroad.
The commission said DOE was the wrong entity to carry out the federal high-level waste program, which doomed the objective from the start. The report cites DOE’s “culture of secrecy,” “we-know-best” decision-making, and an inability to work in a cooperative manner with potential host states and communities. The commission commended DOE for developing a consent-based storage siting draft, but said the 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act — which specifically established Yucca Mountain as the federal nuclear waste storage site — “institutionalized an adversarial relationship between DOE and Nevada.” Yucca failed for many reasons, the report states, but mainly because of the forced siting approach.
“The coming year will likely present a major new political battlefield for the State of Nevada’s struggle against the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository,” the commission said.
Korsnick Hopes for Progress on Both Yucca Mountain, Interim Storage
Nuclear Energy Institute CEO Maria Korsnick said this week she hopes for progress in the 115th Congress for both Yucca Mountain and consolidated interim storage of nuclear waste.
Korsnick, who spoke on a panel at the United States Energy Association’s State of the Energy Industry Forum in Washington, D.C., has been addressing issues concerning America’s operating nuclear fleet and nuclear waste this year since succeeding Marvin Fertel as head of the nuclear industry’s lobbying arm.
On Tuesday, she was asked how NEI is gearing up for a potential resumption of Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Korsnick said she anticipates activity in Congress, indirectly mentioning the retirement of Reid, who almost singlehandedly killed the repository project during his long tenure in the Senate.
“Clearly used fuel will be a discussion at some point in this Congress, likely because we had some folks who really did not want a used fuel conversation, and they have left the building,” Korsnick said. “We’re very interested to further that, but NEI’s position is that we want progress on Yucca, and we want interim storage [of spent nuclear fuel]. We think that as we look over the long term, both of those components are going to be important. Even if Yucca were to restart today, it’s still going to be several years, and we look at progress on Yucca and interim storage as a combined, best solution.”
She also voiced support Tuesday for President Donald Trump’s new executive order curtailing federal regulations in order to increase flexibility for businesses.
The so-called “one-in, two-out” plan requires that federal agencies designate two regulations to abolish for every new regulation approved. Korsnick said there is a way to reduce regulations on the nuclear industry without threatening safety at power plants.
“(The nuclear industry is) rife with regulation, and just look over the years and years and years, the tendency is just to continue to add regulation, and so I think that we are a great candidate to take a look at smartly lessening regulation,” Korsnick said. “I don’t think any deregulation should just be done casually, and may have unintended consequences, but I think there is a lot of folks that have been in this industry for many years that can see the ways to reduce regulation that wouldn’t nearly touch anything relative to safety.”
