U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday played down any danger of placing nuclear waste in a planned geologic repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
“I’m sure that Yucca Mountain is the most studied piece of land in the world. I’m think it’s a safe location. Scientists tell us that it’s a safe location, but it’s politics that gets in the way,” Perry said during a discussion on energy policy in Washington, D.C., organized by NBC News and Axios.
Pressed by moderator Chuck Todd of on whether he would feel safe having his grandchildren living near Yucca Mountain should the storage site be built, Perry responded, “Have you ever been to Yucca?”
Perry himself visited the site in March,
The 1987 congressional amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act specifically designates the Nye County, Nev., location as the future home for U.S. defense and commercial radioactive waste, including spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. Apart from some preliminary work, little has been done at Yucca Mountain since then and the Obama administration halted all work on the project in 2010.
The Trump administration Energy Department under Perry has refocused on Yucca, seeking $150 million in the current fiscal 2018 to resume licensing activities at DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The House has signed off on this approach, while the Senate has yet to support any spending on the program even following the retirement of never-Yucca Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in January. Nevada’s leaders remain fiercely opposed to making their state — which has no nuclear power plants — home to tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste.
The current budget year began on Oct. 1. The federal government through Dec. 8 is funded by a continuing resolution that primarily keeps spending at fiscal 2017 levels. There was no money for Yucca Mountain in the fiscal 2017 budget.
Supporters say the chosen location is ideal – remote, geologically stable, and separated from groundwater that could disperse radioactive contaminants. They add that this has been demonstrated in numerous studies.
Critics say Yucca Mountain proponents have not proven the environmental and safety case for the repository, and they quickly fired back at Perry’s comments.
“Nevada continues to reject Yucca Mountain not only because of the threat it poses to the people of Southern Nevada and those living along the proposed transportation routes, but it also threatens the tourism industry that is the backbone of our economy. Additionally, remaining questions on the storage of nuclear waste and seismic activity in the area make it clear that Yucca is not a safe site,” Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) said in a statement to RadWaste Monitor.
Robert Halstead, executive director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, noted that the Nuclear Regulatory Commissioning in 2009 accepted more than 218 technical contentions filed by the state over potential safety and environmental threats posed by the repository. “If restarted, the full NRC process, which includes trial-like hearings and cross-examination of expert witnesses, would likely take five years and $2 billion to complete,” Halstead said by email.
Nonetheless, Perry expressed optimism for an eventual solution to the nation’s nuclear waste impasse.
“Are we going to be smart enough to able to deal with the waste? I think we are. That’s a political issue. Whether it’s out at Yucca, whether it’s WIPP [the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant] in New Mexico, whether it’s Waste Control Specialists’ site in West Texas,” the former Texas governor told the audience in Washington.
In October, Perry said it would be “wise” to consider locations other than Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste storage. He has previously mentioned WIPP and the Waste Control Specialists’ storage complex in Texas as options for interim or permanent disposal.
WIPP, the underground complex for storage of DOE transuranic waste, is specifically prohibited from holding high-level radioactive waste and spent reactor fuel under its 1992 establishing legislation.
Waste Control Specialists is already licensed to store low-level radioactive waste and last year applied for an NRC license for a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for up to 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel. However, the Dallas-based company’s future is not clear: It asked the NRC in April to suspend review of the CISF application pending its merger with nuclear services provider EnergySolutions, which a federal judge in June blocked on antitrust grounds. Parent company Valhi Inc. has been seeking a new buyer for Waste Control Specialists, but has not made a public announcement regarding any deal.
NRC Spent $66K on Yucca Mountain Licensing in September
Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September spent $66,799 of its remaining Nuclear Waste Fund balance as it gears up for potential resumption of adjudication of the license application for the Yucca Mountain repository.
That left the regulator with $532,220 that had not been spent or obligated until such time as Congress turns on the spigot from the fund, according to an Oct. 24 update from NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.).
The NRC is the adjudicator for the DOE license application. However, the agencies suspended the process in 2010 on the orders of the Obama administration.
A federal appeals court in 2013 ordered the NRC to resume the licensing process. At the time, the regulator had $13.5 million in available funding from the Nuclear Waste Fund for work on Yucca Mountain. Over more than four years, the NRC as of September had spent $12.9 million, primarily on finishing a safety evaluation report on the project ($8.4 million) and a supplement to the DOE environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain ($1.6 million).
Much of the September spending followed from the commission’s direction in July that staff schedule a virtual meeting of the Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel (LSNARP) on possible revival of the Licensing Support Network or establishing an alternative system. The network holds about 4 million documents that would support the NRC adjudicatory hearing for a revived DOE license application for Yucca Mountain.
“During the month of September, agency staff continued (1) planning for fall 2017 training for LSNARP members and other interested participants to become familiar with the functionality and operations of the recently-completed ADAMS LSN Library, (2) organizing an LSNARP virtual meeting, and (3) assessing the availability of potential hearing space at Federal venues in Nevada and at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Maryland,” according to the NRC update.
NRC Commissioner Jeff Baran, who has been nominated for a new five-year term, alone among the current three members of the panel voted against the new spending. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wy.) noted the vote at Baran’s nomination hearing in October as a seeming sign of the commissioner’s antipathy for Yucca Mountain. Baran, who said in later correspondence with lawmakers he has not determined his position on the project, made it through the committee and is waiting for a confirmation vote on the Senate floor.
Also in September, agency staff finished updating the collection of knowledge management reports that provide technical information to assist in the Yucca review.
The NRC’s spending through Sept. 30 left it with an unexpended balance of $605,789, plus $73,659 in unexpended obligations that are largely for contracts with the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses and contracts involving the LSNARP virtual meeting.
There is no known projection for how long the commission’s remaining Nuclear Waste Fund balance will last.
ExchangeMonitor reporter Wayne Barber contributed to this report.
