The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the end of March had $464,544 remaining in its available balance from the fund that pays for its licensing activities for the planned Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository in Nevada, according to the latest update to Congress.
The agency spent $42,506 of its Nuclear Waste Fund carryover during the month. Of that, $23,217 represented “Trailing costs” from a Feb. 27-28 meeting on options for reconstituting the Licensing Support Network (LSN), the database of more than 3 million documents related to the NRC’s adjudication of the Department of Energy license application for Yucca Mountain. The LSN was retired, and the documents shifted to the NRC’s online records library, after the Obama administration in 2010 canceled all work on Yucca Mountain.
Of the remaining spending in March, $18,185 went toward knowledge management reports and $1,104 toward other support costs chargeable to the Nuclear Waste Fund, says the report, which was posted to the NRC website on Monday.
The NRC had $13.5 million in carryover balance from the Nuclear Waste Fund when a federal judge in August 2013 ordered the agency to resume the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding. It has since then spent just over $13 million, primarily on completing a safety evaluation report for Yucca Mountain, a supplement to the environmental impact statement for the application, and moving the LNS documents into the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).
Of the total remaining balance of $504,220 as of March, $39,676 is unspent but already obligated.
The Trump administration wants to resume licensing for Yucca Mountain. For the current budget year, Congress rejected the NRC’s request of $30 million to restart adjudication of the DOE license application. The regulator is seeking nearly $48 million for that purpose in fiscal 2019, which begins on Oct. 1.
