A trio of U.S. senators on Tuesday took a third swing at legislation that would remove management of the federal nuclear waste program from the Department of Energy in hopes of finally driving it forward.
The 2019 version of the Nuclear Waste Administration Act appears identical to the iterations of the bill introduced in 2013 and 2015. Both of those measures died in committee.
The legislation adopts a consent-based approach to nuclear waste management, with an emphasis on consolidating the national stockpile in a limited number of storage sites ahead of eventually burying it in a permanent repository. That contrasts with another new piece of legislation, also based on an older bill, that aims directly to help bring the long-planned disposal site under Yucca Mountain, Nev., into existence.
Proponents of both approaches made their case in separate hearings this week on Capitol Hill. While they disagree on the method, the lawmakers concurred that hopes for revitalizing the U.S. nuclear power industry rely on having someplace to put the waste generated by those reactors.
“As we pursue the future of nuclear energy it’s also important that we contend with the federal government’s failure to meets its obligations for spent nuclear fuel. Solving that nuclear waste stalemate is a top priority of mine,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said at a hearing Tuesday, a few hours before she joined with Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in filing the legislation.
All three lawmakers were among the sponsors of the 2013 and 2015 bills, along with a handful of colleagues who are apparently taking a breather this time.
There is now roughly 80,000 metric tons of spent fuel stored on-site at active and retired nuclear power plants in 34 states. In the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Congress gave the Department of Energy until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin taking used fuel and a smaller amount of high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations for disposal. Five years later it amended the law to direct that the material ultimately go to federal land about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The Energy Department’s 2008 license application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been moribund for nearly a decade after the Obama administration defunded the proceeding in 2010. The Trump administration has twice asked Congress for appropriations to resume licensing, and has twice been rejected. Nonetheless, it is seeking more than $150 million for the work at the two agencies in fiscal 2020.
Meanwhile, two corporate teams have filed NRC applications for 40-year licenses to hold the spent fuel temporarily in Texas and New Mexico.
The legislative measures in the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019 are derived closely from the 2012 recommendations of the Obama administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.
If approved in this Congress, the legislation would, among other things:
- Establish a new federal organization responsible for siting, licensing, building, and operating waste facilities. The organization would be led by a White House-nominated, Senate-confirmed administrator with one or more six-year terms.
- Direct construction of a pilot storage facility for priority waste, at least one storage site for nonpriority waste, and at least one permanent repository for the waste. Siting of storage facilities for nonpriority waste would be allowed for up to a decade as long as a repository program is also funded and operating. After 10 years, a repository location must be under consideration for any further storage sites to go ahead.
- Require that communities determine “whether, and on what terms” they will accept a waste site.
- Establish a five-person Nuclear Waste Oversight Board that would manage funding for the projects in two separate accounts: the existing Nuclear Waste Fund, which would keep its current balance for waste management, and a working capital fund with new utility fees.
- Keep the door open for separate disposal sites for commercial and defense waste. The Obama administration planned for separate sites, but the Trump administration appears to have abandoned that approach in focusing on Yucca Mountain.
During Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which was primarily focused on a separate bill from Murkowski aimed at promoting new nuclear power technology, lawmakers acknowledged that Yucca Mountain remains the law of the land. But Alexander emphasized that the Nuclear Waste Administration Act does not address that project in any fashion.
“We can argue about Yucca Mountain. But this bill doesn’t have anything to do with Yucca Mountain, because it provides additional sites,” he told Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who, like the rest of Nevada’s congressional delegation, is unstinting in her opposition to bringing nuclear waste into the state.
In a prepared statement, Alexander said the federal government should establish interim and permanent sites in welcoming communities and states. That presumably would not include Nevada, where state leaders and the congressional delegation have for decades opposed the Yucca Mountain project.
The bill, as in previous Congresses, was sent to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Murkowski chairs. As of Friday, no hearing on the legislation had been scheduled.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) is preparing to file his Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, after a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing Wednesday in which supporters and opponents argued over its Yucca Mountain-focused approach. The bill adheres almost completely to language in a same-named bill filed in 2017 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), which advanced with deep support out of the House but received no attention in the Senate.
The Barrasso bill would make a number of amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. While it does create a path for private operation of at least one “monitored retrievable storage” facility, the attention-getting language is on Yucca Mountain. Among the measures, the bill calls for permanent withdrawal of 147,000 acres of federal land in Nye County specifically for the repository, with the land transferred from the Interior Department; raising the repository’s maximum capacity from 70,000 metric tons to 110,000 metric tons; and prohibiting any work on a disposal site for defense-only waste until the NRC rules on the Yucca application.
There was no immediate word on when Barrasso would file his bill. In his opening statement at Wednesday’s hearing, he expressed hope of reaching “bipartisan agreement” to pass the legislation.
Stakeholders had thoughts on both pieces of legislation, though they avoided handicapping their chances of passage.
“We are encouraged that multiple committees in the Senate are focused on addressing the management of our nation’s used fuel,” Maria Korsnick, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to working together to reach consensus on the best approach for the management of the nation’s used fuel. As the legislative process continues, the nuclear industry continues to safely and securely store used fuel at our facilities.”
Others have been less sanguine about the bill from Murkowski and her colleagues. It would create even more political appointees under the new organization, which “further politicizes the program and will render it unworkable,” one industry source said recently. It also ignores the $15 billion or more already spent on Yucca Mountain and the science that shows it is a workable disposal site, the source added.
Geoff Fettus, senior attorney for the nongovernmental Natural Resources Defense Council’s nuclear program, said both bills “take us in the wrong direction.”
While the NRDC supports use of deep geologic repositories for nuclear waste, it says the correct approach involves what Fettus calls “cooperative federalism” to give states more authority in the process.
