Even if they succeed, the Joe Biden administration’s plans to revamp the way the government selects a spot for the interim storage of spent nuclear fuel will require a change to federal law, the Department of Energy’s inspector general wrote last week.
“The [Fiscal year 2021] budget request included funds to begin development of interim storage options as part of an integrated plan,” DOE’s Inspector General wrote in the latest audit of the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF), published last week. “However, the NWPA [Nuclear Waste Policy Act ], as amended, mandates pursuing Yucca Mountain. Therefore, amending the NWPA will be necessary in order to pursue a new approach.”
The NWPA bars DOE from looking into a federal interim storage option until it opens a permanent repository for spent fuel. The Yucca Mountain site in Nye County, Nev., remains the only congressionally authorized site for permanent, deep-geological nuclear-waste disposal.
The Biden administration has already committed not to develop Yucca Mountain and it has now been about three years since the last serious political push to reform the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. In 2018, the now-retired Rep. John Shumkus (R-Ill.) shepherded his Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act through the House, where the bill got resounding bipartisan support.
Among other things, Shimkus’ bill — which died in the Senate and did not even make it that far when it was resurrected in 2019 — would have eased restrictions on interim storage a little by allowing DOE to start work on a federal interim storage repository after the NRC ruled one way or another on a Yucca license application from DOE.
When Shimkus’ ill-fated push for nuclear waste reform passed the House in 2018, Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), who now chairs the House Energy and Commerce environment and climate change subcommittee, called interim storage “the most important thing this bill does.”
Meanwhile, Shimkus is now retired from Congress and the industry is still holding on for a new hero on the Hill, the head of decommissioning for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California said at the recent Decommissioning Strategy Forum, hosted by the Exchange Monitor.
As for the Biden administration’s strategy, which involves the Barack Obama administration’s consent-based siting approach, the Department of Energy plans to put out a request for information eventually. As of late October, however, DOE still had not provided a definitive timeline for doing so.
DOE ceased trying to license Yucca Mountain in 2011 when the Obama administration cut off funding for everything at the site but guns and gates, following pressure from prominent Nevada politicians, most notably the former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
