A group of scientists with decades of experience consulting for the federal government sent a letter on Monday to Secretary of Energy-designate Rick Perry, urging the Energy Department to complete the Yucca Mountain licensing process.
The Sustainable Fuel Cycle Task Force Science Panel, a five-member board that includes scientists from DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories, urged the former Texas governor and DOE to re-establish the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management; strike a “mutually beneficial” partnership with Nevada as the host state for Yucca Mountain; and iron out long-term “legislative enhancements” to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to include consolidated interim storage of nuclear waste. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, as amended in 1987, designated Yucca Mountain as the site for a national repository for tens of thousands of tons of commercial spent fuel and defense nuclear waste.
“Saddling our children and grandchildren with spent nuclear fuel in dozens of temporary storage locations across the country adjacent to our rivers, lakes, and seashores along with seemingly endless financial liabilities for engineered storage is not what they deserve from us,” the group wrote. “We need to act and the time is now.”
DOE withdrew its Yucca Mountain license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2010, following cancellation orders from the Obama administration. Issue followers believe the Trump administration plans to restart the licensing process, while project opponents in Nevada are preparing to defend some 300 legal contentions that remain on file against the repository.
The panel argued that Yucca Mountain meets all protective safety and environmental protection regulations, citing scientific conclusions from both DOE and the NRC. The federal government has spent about $15 billion on Yucca Mountain since 1987. The NRC in May issued its final supplement to DOE’s Yucca Mountain environmental impact statement (EIS), which was submitted in 2002, finding the impact to groundwater from any potential spent nuclear fuel leaks and high-level nuclear waste would be “small.”
The panel asked that concerns from Nevadans and other intervenors should be addressed through the NRC license adjudication process, “an open and transparent” process before impartial judges.
“This process should be allowed to resume and continue to its conclusion without political interference,” the panel wrote. “Over the past eight years, politics have been used to run roughshod over science, and it is now time to put science and the interests of our nation ahead of personal political agendas.”
The Department of Energy should also add concepts for interim storage facilities and advanced transportation technologies to its Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS), the panel said, diversifying DOE’s strategy in handling America’s nuclear waste. The IWMS is DOE’s effort in transporting, storing, and disposing of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste, which includes the consent-based siting process.
The group includes: Ruth Weiner, principal member of the technical staff of Sandia National Laboratories, and project lead for Radioactive Materials Transportation Risk Assessment; Wendell Weart, a retired earth scientist from Sandia National Laboratories, where he served as scientific program manager for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant; Charles Fairhurst, a geologist from the University of Minnesota; Warner North, principal scientist for California-based NorthWorks; and Isaac J. Winograd, senior scientist emeritus at the U. S. Geological Survey.
Senate Committee Vote on Perry Delayed to Next Week
Perry will wait until next week for a confirmation vote in a key Senate committee.
Perry, the former Texas governor who helped usher a commercially operated nuclear-waste repository into the state during his 15-year run in Austin, had his initial confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week.
The committee had scheduled a business meeting for Tuesday of this week to consider Perry and fellow Cabinet nominee Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), who President Donald Trump has tapped as his secretary of the interior.
However, committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) “had some follow-up questions” for the nominees, “which is why the business meeting was postponed,” a committee aide said Wednesday.
The committee now is slated to vote on the nominations on Jan. 31.
In his confirmation hearing last week, Perry hinted the new administration will pay close attention to the $6-billion-a-year cleanup of Cold War nuclear waste managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
“[P]rioritizing the funding and managing that funding in an appropriate way to clean up these waste sites is going to be very, very high on the priority list,” Perry told the panel.
Reporter Dan Leone contributed to this article.
