The federal fund intended to pay for the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., held $40.9 billion in U.S. Treasury securities at the end of fiscal 2019 on Sept. 30, according to the latest audit from the Department of Energy.
That rose from $39.2 billion in the Nuclear Waste Fund at the close of the preceding federal budget year, public accounting firm KPMG determined in the audit performed on behalf of the agency’s Office of Inspector General.
The fair value of the securities increased from $43.4 billion to $49.3 billion over the year, KPMG said in its report.
The government is unlikely to make a large withdrawal from the fund in the current fiscal 2020. Congress appears set to again reject the Trump administration’s request for roughly $150 million to resume the long-stalled licensing proceeding for Yucca Mountain at the Energy Department, the applicant, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the licensor.
“Funds to restart licensing activities for Yucca Mountain were requested in the FY 2018 and FY 2019 Budget Requests but not received,” the KPMG auditors’ report notes. “Similarly funds were requested in the FY 2020 Budget Request but significant funding for FY 2020 is unlikely.”
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act put the Energy Department in charge of disposal of what is now a national holding of roughly 100,000 metric tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants and high-level defense waste. It also established the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the disposal facility, which a 1987 amendment to the law directed be built at Yucca Mountain.
Nuclear utilities paid into the fund, with the federal government’s commitment under no few than 68 separate Standard Contracts that it would begin accepting their waste for disposal by Jan. 31, 1998. That has yet to happen, nearly 22 years past the deadline. The federal government has already paid more than $7 billion to utilities for breach of the contracts. Its remaining liability is estimated at $28.5 billion as of Sept. 30, a step up from $28.1 billion at the end of fiscal 2018, the audit says.
