The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January spent just $219 of its remaining balance from the Nuclear Waste Fund.
That left the agency with a balance of $430,978 from the fund intended to pay for a national repository for high-level waste from defense nuclear operations and spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants.
“While there are no significant actions to report for the months, the NRC provided limited program planning and support activities that resulted in nominal expenditures,” Chairman Kristine Svinicki wrote in a Feb. 27 letter attached to the agency’s latest Nuclear Waste Fund spending report to Congress.
For the past year, the NRC has limited monthly spending to a few hundred dollars for unspecified program planning and support.
The agency is the adjudicator for the Department of Energy’s 2008 license application for the geologic repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. However, the proceeding has been frozen since being defunded by the Obama administration in 2010.
In three successive budget requests, the Trump administration asked Congress to appropriate money to resume licensing at DOE and the NRC. Lawmakers rejected each proposal. For the upcoming fiscal 2021, the administration has forgone trying to revive Yucca Mountain in favor of a $27.5 million ask focused on promoting centralized, interim storage of nuclear waste ahead of a repository.
A federal appeals court in August 2013 ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume work on the license application, even though the Energy Department was not pursuing the project. The NRC at the time had over $13.5 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund. It has subsequently spent more than $13.1 million, with major expenditures including $8.4 million to complete a safety evaluation report on licensing and nearly $1.6 million for a supplement to the environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain.
Minus further appropriations from Congress, the agency’s remaining balance will continue to slowly dwindle.
