By Wayne Barber
In keeping with a 2013 federal court order, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has now spent most of its unobligated Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) money on efforts related to licensing the Energy Department’s planned geologic repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The NRC recently reported to Congress that of the roughly $13.55 million of carryover funding that was on the books in August 2013, the total unobligated funding remaining on May 31 was less than $700,000.
“The unexpended NWF balance of $1,081,347 includes $383,610 of unexpended obligations,” according to the monthly report, sent on June 22 by NRC Chair Kristine Svinicki to Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The unexpended obligations are mainly on contracts with the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses and on contracts connected with loading Licensing Support Network (LSN) documents into the NRC database.
In August 2013, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the NRC to “promptly continue with the legally mandated licensing process” for Yucca Mountain, the congressionally mandated location for permanent storage of U.S. spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
The court decision effectively meant that while the Obama administration Department of Energy had terminated work on the facility, the NRC could not simply stop using available NWF money toward the technical review of Yucca Mountain.
Following the D.C. Circuit ruling, the NRC moved to, among other things, complete and issue its safety evaluation report on Yucca Mountain at a cost of nearly $8.4 million. Developing the supplement to the site environmental impact statement cost another $1.6 million.
In May, the NRC spent $119,083 from the Nuclear Waste Fund, for work including staff updates to the knowledge management reports collection and dealing with a lawsuit from the state of Texas demanding that the agency complete adjudication of Yucca Mountain licensing, Svinicki said.
The Trump administration DOE plans to resume the Yucca Mountain license process. Its fiscal 2018 budget plan calls for providing the NRC with $30 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund for licensing activities.
The state of Nevada estimates DOE will need $1.7 billion and the NRC $330 million for the licensing work that remains.
In a series of SECY papers filed with the commission on Oct. 19, 2016, NRC staff identified additional activity that could be done using some of the remaining funds, given commission approval.
These potential activities fall into the categories of rulemakings and knowledge management.
Specifically, the potential rulemaking activities identified were physical security, material control and accounting, and fitness for duty. Given that it’s been nearly 10 years since receipt of the initial DOE license application, NRC staff believes some of these issues need to be revisited.
As part of the NRC’s closure of its Yucca Mountain review activities in fiscal 2011, staff produced a set of knowledge management reports. These reports were primarily authored by staff from the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses (CNWRA) and are available in the NRC’s ADAMS documents database.
NRC staff thinks that some of these reports should be refreshed. “The emphasis in this task would be on insights gained in selected technical areas since 2011, including new approaches or understanding in the specific fields of pre-closure and post-closure safety assessment and climate and hydrologic processes,” staff said.
