The federal government is likely to rack up tens of billions of dollars in liability over the Department of Energy’s decades-long failure to meet its legal mandate to build a permanent home for spent fuel from U.S. commercial power reactors, lawmakers and panelists said Tuesday during a congressional hearing on U.S. nuclear waste management.
More than $6 billion has already been paid through the Treasury Department’s judgment fund to settle lawsuits filed by nuclear utilities forced to pay for on-site storage of what is now more than 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel spread around the nation.
A number of slightly different projections for the total liability were mentioned during a session of the House Oversight interior, energy, and environment subcommittee: panel Chairman Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) mentioned $29 billion; Anthony O’Donnell, chairman of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners nuclear waste disposal committee, said roughly $27 million; and Katie Tubb, a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, cited a 2016 DOE estimate of $24.7 million.
O’Donnell and Tubb noted that their numbers were based on DOE’s capacity to begin accepting used fuel by 2021. Both indicated that is unlikely to happen.
“The nuclear industry estimates at least $50 billion in liabilities,” Tubb said in her opening statement to the subcommittee.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act set a deadline of 1998 for the Department of Energy to begin removing nuclear waste from commercial power plants. Congress amended the law in 1987 to designate Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as the permanent repository for that waste, and DOE in 2008 filed its license application for the site with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Only two years later, the Obama administration mothballed the Yucca project and dismantled the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
The Trump administration has sought to revive the project in the upcoming budget year with $150 million in funding for licensing operations at DOE and the NRC. The House has largely supported the request, while the Senate has so far in its budget process offered no money for Yucca Mountain.
Even if the administration has its way, there are other obstacles. Tubb noted that a significant amount of expertise has been lost at DOE over the years: “We are basically back where we started in 2008. It is going to take a lot of effort to bring back the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, but I think it’s very doable, it will just take time and money.”
The Energy Department spent $15 billion on early stage development of Yucca Mountain, including test tunnels. In 2017 figures the life-cycle cost estimate from 2008 would be $97 billion over 125 years, Tubb said.
Consolidating nuclear fuel into a small number of interim storage sites has long been part of the discussion, and gained steam as the Obama administration sought an alternative to Yucca Mountain. The NRC is currently reviewing a license application from Holtec International for an interim spent fuel facility in southeastern New Mexico; it has suspended review of another facility, planned for West Texas, at the request of license applicant Waste Control Specialists.
“We can begin the process of restarting Yucca Mountain, but there is also a large cost saving from not storing waste at many sites all over the country,” said David Victor, chairman of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) Community Engagement Panel. “For people who are concerned about the cost of all of this, interim storage has a vital role to play. At San Onofre what is striking to me is that there are already dozens of canisters that are ready to ship as soon as we have a place to send it.”
O’Donnell concurred, but with concerns: “I’m open to consolidated interim storage, but we have to make sure that doesn’t turn into the next bottleneck where we just kick the problem down the road.”
Many speakers on both sides of the dais emphasized Yucca Mountain as the best option for ultimate disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste, both spent fuel and defense-related material.
“Is there any question in your mind that anywhere on Earth that is dry, is not near populated centers, not near faults, even if above ground, would be safer than that location (Yucca Mountain) in a 10,000-year calculation?” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked.
Issa noted that spent fuel from decades of operation of the now-closed SONGS plant, which is in his congressional district, is currently stored on site, only yards from a major interstate and the Pacific Ocean, and on an active fault.
Speakers also noted that utilities had paid billions of dollars into the Nuclear Waste Fund, which as of fiscal 2016 held nearly $40 billion intended to fund a permanent nuclear waste repository.
“The United States needs, and consumers have paid for, a permanent storage solution – and nothing less,” O’Donnell told the panel. “To put it bluntly, the citizens of states and localities have the federal government’s waste and the federal government has our money.”
