PHOENIX — The Department of Energy has yet to select a candidate to lead its ongoing effort to find a willing community to host a federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, the agency’s nuclear power head said here Monday.
Although DOE is no longer accepting applications for its vacant deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition role, the agency has not yet hired anyone for the position, Kathryn Huff, assistant secretary for nuclear energy, told the Exchange Monitor Monday on the sidelines at the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix.
“I do not know when we will make that decision,” Huff said, “but I hope it will be soon.”
Kim Petry has held the deputy assistant secretary position in an acting capacity since December, when DOE fired Sam Brinton from the role. Brinton, who the agency brought on in June, was charged in two states with stealing luggage from airport baggage claims.
The deputy assistant secretary role, a position known within DOE as NE-8, is part of the federal government’s senior executive service.
Huff told the Exchange Monitor Monday that she would not personally interview any potential NE-8 candidates, but that she would instead make a final decision based on recommendations from the DOE’s hiring department.
The new NE-8 would take the reins of DOE’s most recent attempt at siting a federally-run interim storage facility. The agency is currently reviewing bids on roughly $26 million in federal funding aimed at bringing stakeholders together to develop best practices for such a project.
During keynote remarks to the Symposium Monday, Huff said that she was optimistic that the feds could find a willing interim storage host this time.
“It feels like we are starting over, to a lot of people,” Huff said “To those people, I say: returning to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
There are currently no sites in the U.S. that can store the country’s 90,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. The only site legally allowed to do so, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, was stalled in 2010 thanks in part to political opposition from the Silver State’s congressional delegation.
The government has learned from past mistakes in siting nuclear waste projects, Huff said, and DOE is ready to apply those lessons to its current consent-based siting inquiry.
“This time around, we will succeed,” Huff said.
