The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reauthorize the Energy Department’s cleanup of the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state.
The measure awaits President Donald Trump’s signature after receiving unanimous consent from the Senate. The president is expected to sign the bill into law within a couple weeks, according to a congressional source.
The House of Representatives in March approved the bill, which was then advanced by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in July.
Introduced by Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), the legislation would reauthorize West Valley funding at $75 million per year through fiscal 2026, an amount equal to the enacted budget for fiscal 2019. That is also the amount supported by the Trump administration and both chambers of Congress for the current fiscal 2020.
The budget year began on Oct. 1, but Congress has yet to pass any final full-year spending bills. The federal government is currently operating under a continuing resolution that largely keeps funding at prior-year levels through Dec. 20.
“For the first time in more than 35 years, our friends and neighbors will have the peace of mind that the West Valley Demonstration Project cleanup is a top priority and has long term funding authorization from Washington,” Reed said in a Tuesday press release.
Undersecretary of Energy for Science Paul Dabbar said in the same press release that “DOE is proud of the cleanup success that has been accomplished at the West Valley site, including the demolition last year of the former Vitrification Facility.”
The Reed measure calls for a Government Accountability Office study on radioactive waste at West Valley, including types of waste, disposal options, and disposal costs. The report would be due within 18 months of the bill’s enactment into law.
But the legislation does not order that West Valley waste be designated as defense-related, as did a 2018 version of Reed’s bill that passed out of the House but died in the Senate. That provision was ultimately stripped out in order to ensure the legislation would advance this time around. Had that language become law, it might have opened the door for sending material from West Valley to DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Local officials say 278 casks of West Valley waste similar to transuranic waste are currently ineligible for disposal at WIPP because the material was processed at a commercial facility and is not considered defense-related. The town of Ashford argues the waste should be considered defense-related because most of it originated from the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.
An Ashford elected official said he is happy to see a federal study into pathways for the site’s waste.
“With dedicated funding and an understanding of possible disposal pathways, DOE, New York State, and the Town of Ashford can now begin to better plan for the future,” Ashford Council Member and Deputy Supervisor John Pfeffer said in the press release.
West Valley is a 200-acre site located within the state-owned, 3,300-acre Western New York Nuclear Service Center. Between 1966 and 1972 the property was home to a commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
The West Valley Demonstration Project Act of 1980 made DOE responsible for cleaning up the site, tearing down the buildings, and eventually disposing of the waste. The act also made the federal agency responsible for 90% of the remediation-related costs at the site. The state pays the other 10%.
CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley has a $542 million DOE remediation contract that runs from 2011 through early March 2020. The work includes demolishing old buildings and removing contaminated equipment and debris.
