Nuclear Regulatory Commission spending from its Nuclear Waste Fund balance slipped below $100 in February, according to the agency’s monthly report to Congress.
The outlay of $97 for unspecified program planning and support left the agency with a balance of $430,881 from the fund intended to pay for federal disposal of high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations and spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants.
The NRC is the adjudicator for the Department of Energy’s 2008 license application for a deep geologic repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Obama administration defunded that proceeding in 2010, freezing licensing for a decade and counting.
However, a federal appeals court in August 2013 ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume work on the license application. At the time, the NRC had just over $13.5 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund. As of Feb. 29, it had spent $13.1 million of that. The primary expense was nearly $8.4 million to complete a safety evaluation report for the license application, followed by over $1.5 million on a supplement to the environmental impact statement on licensing and $1.1 million to load documents from the proceeding into the NRC’s public documents database.
Spending over the past year has dropped to at most a few hundred dollars per month, suggesting the NRC balance could be stretched out indefinitely.
Congress would have to appropriate more money for the NRC. The Trump administration tried in three successive budget cycles asked for money from the fund to resume licensing for Yucca Mountain at the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but was rebuffed each time on Capitol Hill. The White House has changed tack for the upcoming fiscal 2021, asking for $27.5 million at DOE for a separate program focused on interim storage of used nuclear fuel. The NRC would get nothing from the Nuclear Waste Fund in this plan.
Within the $430,881 balance, the agency has committed $8,097 to pay for contracts with the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses.
