As has been its practice for the better part of a year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December spent less than $1,000 of its remaining balance from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund.
The $780 outlay for unspecified program planning and support left the agency with an unspent, unobligated balance of $405,246, according to the latest spending update to Congress.
The Nuclear Waste Fund is intended to be used to pay for a radioactive waste repository, which the Department of Energy by law must build under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Energy Department in 2008, during the George W. Bush administration, submitted its application to build and operate the facility to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later. But a federal appeals court in August 2013 ordered the NRC to resume work on the license application.
At the time the regulator had a balance of more than $13.5 million from the fund. As of December, it had spent just over $13.1 million – using nearly $8.4 million to complete a safety evaluation report on the application, along with nearly $1.6 million for a supplement to the environmental impact statement for the project.
The NRC has said it would need Congress to appropriate additional money from the fund to actually carry out its review of the DOE license application. The Trump administration has proposed funding in its last three budget plans to resume licensing at DOE and the NRC, but has been rebuffed each time by Congress. Issue watchers at an industry conference last week said they do not expect the White House to try again in the upcoming fiscal 2021, but the administration said it will not discuss its intentions until the release of its budget proposal on Feb. 10.
