WASHINGTON — The federal government should prioritize interim storage of spent nuclear fuel at privately licensed sites instead of fast-tracking a permanent disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the head of the Senate panel in charge of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget said in a hearing Wednesday.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, said it would be far faster and cheaper to license a private company such as Holtec International or Waste Control Specialists to take temporary custody of spent fuel.
That set the Senate, once again, in opposition with the House of Representatives, where GOP lawmakers who control the chamber have invested their political muscle into restarting Yucca Mountain over the continuing objections of host state Nevada.
“This is an unacceptable stalemate,” Alexander said. “The Senate has to pass Yucca or the House has to pass interim storage.”
NRC Chair Kristine Svinicki, one of three witnesses at the budget hearing, stood by a commission estimate that it would take about three years to license a privately operated interim storage facility for spent fuel. On the other hand, Svinicki said it would take between three and five years of legal and regulatory wrangling over the Energy Department’s Yucca Mountain license application before construction of the repository could begin in earnest.
The Barack Obama administration suspended DOE’s application to license Yucca as a permanent storage facility in 2010. Its long-term plan for disposition of more than 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power reactors included consolidated interim storage, and both Holtec and Waste Control Specialists have applied for NRC licenses to build and operate such sites. Dallas-based WCS, though, asked the regulator to suspend review of its application while it tries to finalize its merger with EnergySolutions.
The Donald Trump administration has proposed restarting the Yucca Mountain application in fiscal 2018, including using $30 million that would be part of an overall NRC budget of more than $950 million. The NRC must approve DOE’s license.
The Department of Energy is also seeking $10 million for interim storage efforts for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
Alexander’s Democratic colleague Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), ranking member on the appropriations panel, all but threw her hands up at the proceedings, lamenting that while Congress had set a nuclear waste policy in place, nobody appeared willing to carry it out.
Feinstein, whose home state within a decade will have shut down its final operating nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, said the U.S. Nuclear Waste Fund has accrued more than $30 billion in fees over the last 30-plus years. The fund was supposed to pay for getting spent fuel out of the states where it was generated — something that did not happen after the powerful Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) helped block Yucca in the Obama years and Congress gridlocked over an alternative solution.
“We have 78 nuclear sites, and no place for nuclear waste,” Feinstein said.
Despite her apparent frustration, Feinstein has long advocated for interim storage.
The House is not opposed outright to interim storage, though the latest draft legislation in the chamber would prohibit DOE from starting any interim storage program until the agency and the NRC decide the fate of Yucca Mountain once and for all.
