The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had a $408,479 unspent, unobligated balance from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the end of January, according to the agency’s latest monthly update to Congress.
The NRC spent $4,073 in January: $2,444 for unspecified program planning and support and the remaining $1,629 on federal litigation.
Established by Congress in 1982, the Nuclear Waste Fund it intended to pay for licensing, development, and construction of a permanent repository for U.S. spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The Department of Energy in 2008 applied for an NRC license for a facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later.
The NRC had a Nuclear Waste Fund balance of more than $13.5 million in August 2013, when an appeals court ordered it to resume licensing activities. It has since spent over $13.1 million of that, primarily on a safety evaluation report on the project, a supplement to a DOE environmental impact statement for the repository, and loading documents from the license adjudication into the agency’s online database.
The remaining $438,400 balance covers $29,921 that has been committed, the update says.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would require additional congressional appropriations from the Nuclear Waste Fund to resume licensing. Congress has twice rejected Trump administration budget requests to provide DOE and the NRC with funds to restart that proceeding.
