Groups in Colorado, South Carolina and Washington state each got 12-month grants from the Energy Communities alliance, worth up to $150,000 each, to develop public engagement processes for nuclear-waste management.
The Energy Communities Alliance (ECA), based in the Washington, D.C., area, announced the grants in a press release July 2, before the U.S. Independence Day holiday.
The winning groups are:
- Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado, which will use the money to talk to community members “about the potential siting of an interim storage facility,” according to ECA’s press release.
- Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization, which will use its grant to develop “educational materials” about the Department of Energy’s nascent, still undefined consent-based siting process for nuclear waste.
- Tri-City Development Council, which will use social media and other venues “to foster an inclusive community dialogue around nuclear waste management,” according to ECA.
DOE’s consent-based siting process aims to pave the way for opening a federally owned interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel from power plants by 2040 or so, and a permanent repository, akin to the moribund Yucca Mountain project, by 2070 or so, agency officials have said.
DOE is legally prohibited from opening an interim storage site until it first opens a permanent repository, so Congress will have to change the law for the agency’s current plan to work.
As constituted, DOE’s consent-based siting program involves 13 groups of grantees, including ECA, who have split $26 million in federal funds to help the agency define what it means to consent to the storage of high-level radioactive waste.
Meanwhile, DOE has started early design work on its federal interim storage site. At the same time, lawsuits involving the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license commercially operated interim storage sites for spent fuel have made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, an independent branch of the federal government.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this year ruled that the NRC was not allowed to license interim storage sites, voiding licenses given to a pair of companies to operate commercial spent-fuel depots.
