After a brief spike for May, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June returned to the standard practice of spending just a few hundred dollars of its remaining balance from the federal fund intended to pay for a permanent radioactive waste disposal facility.
The NRC outlay from its Nuclear Waste Fund carryover for the month totaled $515 for unspecified program planning and support. That is in line with its spending most every month since early 2019, according to the federal regulator’s reports to Congress.
In May, the NRC applied $282 toward program planning and support, but another $2,577 for knowledge management reports
The June spending left the agency with a $426,710 balance from the fund, of which $5,520 is obligated to pay contracts with the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses.
Congress established the fund in the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which directed the Department of Energy to build and operate a geologic repository for tens of thousands of tons of high-level waste from defense nuclear operations and spent fuel from commercial power plants. The legislation was amended in 1987 to designate Yucca Mountain as the location for the disposal site.
The Energy Department filed its license application with the NRC in 2008, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later. A federal appeals court, though, in August 2013 ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume work on the application.
Since then, the agency has spent over $13.1 million of the more than $13.5 million it had on hand from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the time of the ruling. The top expenses have included nearly $8.4 million to complete a safety evaluation report for the license application and close to $1.6 million for a supplement to the environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain.
Any additional money from the Nuclear Waste Fund would have to be appropriated by Congress.
