Rita Baranwal was formally sworn in Thursday as assistant secretary for nuclear energy at the Department of Energy.
The materials engineer and nuclear industry veteran had already started work, including receiving internal briefings, prior to her ceremonial swearing-in by Energy Secretary Rick Perry, according to an industry source.
“I am excited and privileged to continue the excellent progress the department and the Office of Nuclear Energy have been making to meet the president’s challenge … to revive, revitalize, and expand the nation’s nuclear energy sector,” Baranwal said in brief comments following the ceremony.
The Senate confirmed Baranwal on June 20, just over five months after she was nominated for a second time to lead the Office of Nuclear Energy. A previously scheduled vacation delayed her official assumption of the position, the source said.
Baranwal will now head the office, with a roughly $1.3 billion annual budget, that oversees DOE efforts to promote the use of nuclear energy. It is also charged with managing at least part of its nuclear waste program, potentially including resumption of the DOE license application for a nuclear waste repository below Yucca Mountain, Nev.
During a November 2018 confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Baranwal committed to following the law on radioactive waste disposal. The 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act leaves Yucca Mountain as the only legal location for the waste repository.
The new assistant secretary made no direct mention of the waste side of her office’s mission in her comments Thursday, focusing on development of new nuclear reactors.
After receiving three degrees in materials engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan, Baranwal spent more than a decade working in the nuclear industry. She was a manager for the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in Pennsylvania from 2005 to 2007, then held several roles at Westinghouse Electric until August 2016.
Baranwal then joined the Energy Department as director of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program. The program, headquartered at the Idaho National Laboratory, provides funding and other resources to promote research and development of nuclear power technologies.
The White House in October 2018 first nominated Baranwal to lead the Office of Nuclear Energy. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced her nomination last November, but the 115th Congress ended on Jan. 3 before she could get a vote by the full Senate. All pending nominations were sent back to the White House, which reupped Baranwal on Jan. 16.
On Thursday, Baranwal thanked her family for its patience during “the uncertainty of this process thus far.”
The last Senate-confirmed assistant secretary for nuclear energy was Pete Lyons, who retired in 2015 after four years on the job. The office had most recently been led by Edward McGinnis, principal deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy.
For the upcoming fiscal 2020, the Energy Department has requested $116 million for its Yucca Mountain and interim storage line item, all but about $6.5 million of that for resuming licensing of the repository about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. In the DOE budget justification, the program is listed separately from the Nuclear Energy funding plan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. However, the Office of Nuclear Energy remains in charge of all activities related to spent nuclear fuel.
Used fuel from commercial nuclear reactors would represent the significant majority of waste buried under Yucca Mountain, which would also hold high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. The U.S. stockpile of spent fuel now stands at about 80,000 metric tons stranded at nuclear sites around the country.
The department’s 2008 license application before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been frozen for the better part of a decade, after the Obama defunded the proceeding in 2010. The Trump administration, for both fiscal 2018 and the current fiscal 2019, unsuccessfully requested congressional appropriations to restart licensing.
Its chances of success do not look any better for the next budget. The House has already passed a multi-agency funding bill that zeroes out the Yucca-heavy request in favor of $47.5 million for an integrated waste management approach focused on consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear power fuel. The House and Senate versions of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act would also both block the $26 million tranche within the $116 million request for defense nuclear waste disposal.
For fiscal 2020, DOE requested slashing the Office of Nuclear Energy budget to $824 million. The House bill brought that back to $1.3 billion. The Senate has yet to issue any appropriations legislation the next budget year, and some sort of interim spending plan appears increasingly likely.
The department for fiscal 2020 requested no money for the Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS) under the Office of Nuclear Energy. That work would instead be shifted to the Yucca Mountain and interim storage program.
Baranwal’s office this year received $22.5 million for IWMS, an Obama-era program intended to encompass a pilot storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, full-scale centralized used fuel storage, and geologic repositories for spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
Among the projects funded in fiscal 2019: system analyses for an “integrated approach” for waste transport, storage, and disposal; ongoing collaboration with state regional and tribal organizations to determine the provision of funding and training for public safety personnel on spent-fuel transport through their jurisdictions; preparing a shipment routing analysis methodology; and preparing and assessing options for moving spent fuel from power plants.
The $47.5 million proposed by the House suggests it wants DOE to continue with its current IWMS approach.
The DOE budget plan would also nearly eliminate funding for the Office of Nuclear Energy’s used fuel disposition research and development, from the current $50.7 million to $5 million. The cut is “the result of focusing funding on targeted R&D supporting storage and disposal,” according to the budget justification.
For fiscal 2020, the office would focus on three projects: studying the performance of a high-burnup used nuclear fuel demonstration; ongoing destructive testing of 25 fuel rods to establish the performance baseline; and other research and development on potential alternative disposal for used fuel.
The House recommended $62.5 million for ongoing used fuel disposition research and development.
