The Department of Energy next year plans to ask potential host communities of a future federal interim storage for spent nuclear fuel to step forward, an official said Thursday.
But ahead of that request for information, DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy plans to inform state governments about its search, Paul Murray, deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and high-level waste, told members of the federal Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board at the group’s annual summer meeting.
“We can’t just go out with an RFI and say ‘we’re looking for host communities to come forwards,’ or else we will run into the trap of, as you say, the states won’t let us move forward,” Murray told board member Kenneth Peddicord at the meeting in North Augusta, S.C.
“I don’t think you want to have a community raising their hand and you have not informed the state leadership,” Peddicord said.
“Oh, completely,” Murray said. “The call for volunteers is for sites that are interested, it’s not a commitment from their part to take this facility, it’s not a commitment on DOE’s part to site a facility there.
Though it still needs a change in federal law to do so, DOE notionally plans in 2038 to open an interim storage site for the long-term housing of both spent nuclear fuel from U.S. power plants and high-level waste from shuttered nuclear-weapon sites managed by the agency’s Office of Environmental Management.
Murray’s office within the Office of Nuclear Energy, staffed by 24 people including administrative personnel, started early design work on the planned interim storage facility in May, solicited feedback from industry in July. “The design is proceeding on schedule,” Murray said Thursday.
At the same time, Murray’s deputy William Boyle is starting work on what Murray called a “total program plan” to coordinate the consolidation of waste from civilian power plants and DOE nuclear-weapon sites at the future interim storage facility and, further in the future, a permanent repository.
Discussions along those lines with the Office of Environmental Management have started, but it will probably take most of 2025 “to agree together on what we’re going to do,” Murray said Thursday.
DOE is legally barred from opening an interim storage facility until it first opens a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, something along the lines of the failed Yucca Mountain site in Nye County, Nev. Resistance from Nevada helped kill Yucca, at least for the last decade and a half. More recently, opposition by Texas to a commercially operated interim storage site put on ice plans to turn power plant spent fuel over to the private sector.
The case of private interim storage is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, an independent branch of the federal government.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Murray also told the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board that his small office is staffing up a little.
This week, Paul Cantonwine joined Murray’s office as the new technical director. Cantowine most recently worked at the Used Fuel and Nuclear Materials Group at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Murray’s office also hopes to hire a new lead for storage and transportation in about two weeks, Murray said.
