By Wayne Barber
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 at the agency.
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 requesting $120 million in the next Department of Energy budget to resume Yucca licensing operations halted by the Obama administration in 2010.
The Yucca Mountain line item would largely go toward reviving the license adjudication for the repository license. NRC officials said this could include using 71 full-time equivalent employees for establishing the process to resolve roughly 300 contentions against the license – many filed by the state of Nevada, which remains vehemently opposed to the project.
The 71-employee estimate is very early in the planning process. Some of the employees are already within the agency and not all of them would be full-time permanent employees, officials said during a conference call with reporters. Much of the planning will be legal work involving attorneys. Other costs included in the $30 million will be hearing space and technology to store the case documents.
The last big NRC appropriation for Yucca Mountain was $29 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund in fiscal 2010, according to agency officials.
Funds for NRC work related to the Nevada repository come from the fund established in 1982 by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Otherwise, the agency’s funding comes from customer fees and, to a lesser extent, congressional appropriations: these are forecast for the next budget, respectively, at $814 million and $138 million.
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. The agency’s work in this area includes oversight of reactor and materials sites decommissioning, along with licensing operations. 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 noted Tuesday.
The spent fuel storage and transportation budget would increase from $24.3 million in fiscal 2017 to $26.2 million in fiscal 2018. Part of that funding would pay for reviews of license applications from two private companies to build and operate consolidated interim spent fuel storage sites.
The NRC is reviewing Holtec International’s license application for a facility in southeastern New Mexico that could have the capacity to hold up to 120,000 metric tons of spent fuel.
It has suspended review of the application from Waste Control Specialists for a 40,000-metric-ton facility in West Texas, at the company’s request, pending resolution of WCS’ planned merger with EnergySolutions. The companies are waiting on a ruling from a federal judge following trial in the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against the merger.
NRC Staffing
Staff reductions at the NRC started in earnest more than three years ago in connection with Project Aim, an effort to make the agency a leaner and more agile regulator. The staff headcount for fiscal 2017’s annualized continuing resolution was 3,595.
Savings from FTE reductions are largely offset by growth in salaries and benefits, including a planned 1.9% pay raise, as well as for rent escalations and operations and maintenance for core information-technology systems.
The fiscal 2018 budget request represents a decrease of over $100 million, including a decrease of over 500 FTE when compared with the fiscal 2014 implemented budget.
The NRC recovers approximately 90% of its budget from licensee fees, minus other specific activities that are not fee recoverable.
