The Nuclear Regulatory Commission budget request for fiscal 2018 puts funding back into licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada even as it reflects overall belt tightening and a continuing reduction in employee headcount.
The regulator is requesting $952 million for the budget year that starts Oct. 1, including 3,284 full-time equivalent employees. That represents a decrease of $48.3 million, including 311 FTE, from the fiscal 2017 annualized continuing resolution budget.
After the Obama administration Department of Energy in 2010 stopped licensing efforts for Yucca Mountain, related activities at the NRC went on life support. The agency’s high-level waste budget line received just $1.8 million in fiscal 2016 and nothing in the 2017 annualized CR.
But the situation has changed as the Trump administration is seeking more than $100 million in the next Department of Energy budget to resume Yucca licensing operations.
“Fiscal year (FY) 2018 resources will support the continuation of the licensing proceeding for the potential construction authorization of a repository,” the NRC said in its budget justification. “Principal activities would include support to, and restart of, the adjudicatory proceeding. The resources budgeted assume that the applicant (U.S. Department of Energy) is prepared to participate as a party to the adjudication.”
The last big NRC appropriation for Yucca Mountain was $29 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund in fiscal 2010, according to agency officials.
The fiscal 2018 budget request would decrease the NRC line item for decommissioning and low-level waste from $43 million in fiscal 2017 to $41.8 million in fiscal 2018. While many reactor retirements have been announced in the past couple years, only one of those sites will actually move into decommissioning during the next fiscal year, NRC officials said Tuesday.
The spent fuel storage and transportation budget would increase from $24.3 million in fiscal 2017 to $26.2 million in fiscal 2018. NRC officials noted that two private companies have submitted license applications for consolidated interim spent fuel storage sites.
