The nearly $50 million the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requested for fiscal 2019 could be enough to restart the quasi-judicial, and long-moribund, adjudication on licensing Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear waste repository, the head of the commission wrote in a letter to Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).
NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki supplied that tidbit in a letter dated March 20 and posted online Wednesday. It was not clear from the NRC’s latest budget request, released in February, whether the $47.7 million sought for Yucca was enough to actually fund licensing procedures, or merely intended to prepare for their resumption.
The NRC had asked for $30 million for the same purpose in the current budget year, which Congress rejected in the omnibus budget bill signed into law last week. In her letter, Svinicki said the difference in the funding requests was due to a difference in timing: “The FY 2019 estimate differs from FY 2018 because it assumes receipt of funds at the beginning of FY 2019, whereas the FY 2018 budget assumed receipt of funds three to six months into the fiscal year.”
Congress designated Yucca Mountain more than three decades ago as the final resting place for tens of thousands of tons of spent commercial reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The Energy Department submitted its license application to the NRC in 2008, but the Obama administration canceled the program upon taking office. Its successor, though, wants to revive the repository.
The current Congress has shown no sign it is ready to give either DOE or the NRC the funding these agencies need to, respectively, file and judge an application to license Yucca for waste disposal.
Yucca Mountain was a political nonstarter in the Senate last year, where Heller — up for re-election as Republicans cling to a razor-thin 51-seat majority in the upper chamber of Congress — has promised to fight it at every turn. Politically, nothing about that situation will change much before the 2019 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
Svinicki’s letter was a reply to a letter Nevada’s senior senator and Yucca-buster-in-chief sent the commission on March 12. In that missive, Heller asked whether the NRC had revised a 3-year-old estimate that it could cost $330 million to resume and complete the Yucca licensing adjudication the Obama administration halted in 2010.
In her March 20 note, Svinicki said the process might cost more than $330 million. Experts estimate it would take between two and five years for DOE to get a definitive decision on its Yucca License application, once — and if — the adjudication begins.
Congressional appropriations for Yucca Mountain would be taken from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund. The NRC had a $13.5 million balance from the fund when the Obama administration halted the adjudication process in 2011, but it has spent most of that money since a federal judge ordered the regulator to resume proceedings in 2013.
The agency spent another $6,044 in February, according to its latest Nuclear Waste Fund update to Congress. That primarily went to a Feb. 27-28 meeting of the Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel to discuss options for reconstituting a massive database of documents on the Yucca licensing.
After February, the NRC had $483,496 left in its unexpended, unobligated carryover from the fund. Remaining funds are expected to be used only for limited information gathering until Congress appropriates more money from the Nuclear Waste Fund, an NRC spokesman said in January.
No Word on NRC Nominees After Yucca Disappears From Budget
Meanwhile, there was no immediate word this week on whether three nominees for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission might finally get up-or-down votes on the Senate floor after Yucca Mountain was blanked on funding for fiscal 2018.
There had been chatter on Capitol Hill that zeroing out the underground repository might persuade Heller to lift his hold on Annie Caputo, a policy adviser to Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), to fill a vacancy on the nuclear-industry regulator. While the hold has persisted, the upper chamber has also taken no action on the two other nominees: South Carolina energy consultant David Wright and serving Commissioner Jeff Baran.
The lawmaker’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week.
Congress is on recess for the next two weeks, returning on April 9. Asked for an update on the NRC nominees, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) forwarded a Senate schedule item that lists the next set of nominees to be considered that day; the list does not include any of the NRC nominees.
The Trump administration issued all three nominations last year. The Senate Environment and Public Works forwarded Caputo and Wright for a floor vote in July 2017, followed by Baran in October.
Baran’s current terms ends on June 30. At that point, the commission theoretically could be left with two members, Chairman Kristine Svinicki and Commissioner Stephen Burns, below the three-member level needed to sustain a quorum.
