Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/7/2015
Amid reports of disagreement between the nuclear industry and senior senators on the path forward on management of U.S. nuclear waste, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee canceled the Aug. 4 hearing to discuss the bipartisan “Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2015.” No official reason was given for the cancellation, but panel spokesman Robert Dillon said this week that the committee’s recent focus on marking up the comprehensive package meant to update the nation’s energy infrastructure and policies left many members drained. “The committee decided to cancel the hearing because of the three-day markup the prior week,” Dillon said by email. He added that committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) “remains committed to a consolidated approach to the storage issue.” The committee has not yet rescheduled the hearing.
Reports this week, though, suggested the hearing was canceled after Senate lawmakers became aware of a Nuclear Energy Institute policy position that supported completing the Yucca Mountain licensing review before establishing any sort of interim, consolidated storage of spent fuel. That stance would run counter to the Senate’s bill for nuclear waste reform, which focuses on enacting interim storage; according to industry sources, NEI’s stance irked senior energy committee leadership, including Murkowski and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). “The way to break the stalemate about where to store waste from nuclear reactors is to proceed toward that goal simultaneously along several paths,” Alexander said in a statement in response to the reports of discord with the industry. “That has been, and I trust will continue to be the view of the President, the utilities that operate reactors and Republican and Democrat senators who are senior on the energy committees.”
NEI, for its part, committed this week to working with Congress and the administration to finding a solution for the back end of the fuel cycle. “We’ve been scheduled to testify a number of times this year and have had the hearings cancelled. It’s a common occurrence,” NEI spokesman John Keeley said in an email statement. “The nuclear energy industry is committed to working with Congress and the administration to establish a sustainable, integrated program for managing the backend of the fuel cycle. Used fuel storage at U.S. nuclear energy facilities will continue in the near term.” According to NEI’s website, the industry position supports both the completion of the Yucca Mountain project and construction of a consolidated interim storage facility.
The “Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2015” was introduced by Murkowski and committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D- Wash.), along with Sens. Alexander and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), as an effort to overhaul the nation’s nuclear waste management strategy. The bill would create a new federal waste management organization to take over spent nuclear fuel disposal from the Department of Energy, allow the construction of a consent-based pilot interim storage facility, and establish a new working capital fund in the U.S. Treasury where fees collected from utilities would be deposited and which would not depend on the approval of congressional appropriators. It also would authorize DOE to build additional consolidated interim storage facilities within 10 years, but after that period a site for a permanent repository would need to be selected.
