Chris Schneidmiller
WC Monitor
2/9/2016
The Obama administration’s fiscal 2017 budget proposal, released Tuesday, lays out an aggressive funding plan to enact a nuclear waste management program to replace the Yucca Mountain deep geologic repository in Nevada.
The money is to be used for the department’s phased, adaptive, consent-based approach to finding permanent storage for tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, DOE spokesman Bart Jackson said.
“The FY 2017 Budget Requeat will expand efforts that support the Administration’s waste management strategy including continued implementaiton of the activities that lay the groundwork for consent based interim storage and transportation of nuclear waste, and activities associated with exploring potential disposal options for some DOE-managed spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste,” DOE said in a budget document.
The Obama budget proposal lists no funding for the nuclear waste management program in the upcoming fiscal year, then $56 million in fiscal 2018 and $94 million in fiscal 2019, according to the department. The outlays would increase into the $200 million to $300 million range in following years before spiking to $1.115 billion in fiscal 2025. How the funds would be specifically used in that period was not immediately known.
After halting funding for construction of the Yucca Mountain deep geologic depository in 2011, the administration formed a blue-ribbon panel to consider options for permanent disposal of the waste stored at government and commercial sites around the country. The panel in 2012 urged a process in which multiple storage facilities are built near willing communities. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz last year said the government would keep commercial fuel separate from defense waste in final storage.
The Department of Energy in December announced the formal beginning of the consent-based siting process, starting with public input this year. In fiscal 2016, DOE plans to “Develop a consent-based siting process to support consolidated commercial used fuel storage, a permanent repository and a separate disposal path for defense waste, all supported by transportation planning and R&D activities such as the deep borehole field test,” DOE said.
For fiscal 2017, the department aims to maintain the “Integrated Waste Management System storage, transportation and consent-based siting activities.”
While work continues on permanent repositories, waste management companies are making plans to build long-term consolidated interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors. Waste Control Specialists plans in April to submit its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a facility in West Texas, while Holtec International is aiming for a June submission for a site in New Mexico. Both companies hope to have their sites operational in 2020.
The NRC budget plan sets aside funding for reviewing the Waste Control Specialists application in fiscal 2017. The agency would need about three years to complete the process.
The DOE budget document also affirms the department’s plan to complete preparations and begin drilling a 16,000-foot field test borehole. The planned five-year, $35 million project in North Dakota is aimed at testing the use of such boreholes for nuclear waste storage. It is scheduled to break ground on Sept. 1, but has been put on hold in the face of local concerns. DOE has said the test will not include any actual nuclear waste.
