The Energy Department would be permitted to construct one or more interim storage sites for nuclear waste, under a 2018 budget recommendation Senate appropriators are expected to release today.
That is according to the bill report for the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee’s 2018 energy and water development appropriations act. Weapons Complex Morning Briefing examined a copy of the bill report Monday evening. The subcommittee is set to mark up the bill today on Capitol Hill.
“[T]he Secretary is authorized, in the current fiscal year and subsequent fiscal years, to conduct a pilot program, through 1 or more private sector partners, to license, construct, and operate 1 or more government or privately owned consolidated storage facilities to provide interim storage as needed for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, with priority for storage given to spent nuclear fuel located on sites without an operating nuclear reactor,” the bill report reads.
The Donald Trump administration requested $120 million in 2018 for DOE to resume its application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent disposal site for spent nuclear fuel from U.S. power plants and other high-level radioactive waste. As part of that ask, the administration requested $10 million to start looking at options for interim storage sites: facilities where spent nuclear fuel now stored at power plants could be consolidated and later forwarded on to Yucca for permanent disposal.
The Barack Obama administration in 2010 essentially killed the Nevada project in what was widely seen as a concession to the powerful — and uncompromisingly anti-Yucca — Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.): the now-retired Democratic leader.
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee essentially granted the Trump administration’s request for Yucca funding as part of a $30-billion DOE budget bill now awaiting a floor vote in that chamber.
If the Senate’s bill becomes law — in spite of the Trump administration’s preference to move ahead with Yucca Mountain — report language directs DOE to release a request for proposals for interim storage sites no later than 120 days after the president signs the bill.
Moreover, the Senate’s bill report would essentially resurrects the Obama administration’s consent-based siting policy for nuclear waste. Report language specifies that a consolidated interim storage site could only be built with the consent of the state, local, and tribal governments in whose jurisdiction the facility would be built.
