Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We’ll check in with one long, big-picture update every 25 days, with a regular flow of updates in between to keep you up to date on news affecting Department of Energy radioactive waste management during the new administration’s crucial first days.
The Trump administration’s nuclear waste policy can begin taking shape now that Rick Perry has been confirmed as energy secretary. The former Texas governor has been on the job just over a week, one of the last Cabinet secretaries to receive Senate confirmation.
The White House is expected to release the broad outlines of its fiscal 2018 budget proposal in mid-March, which could point toward its approach on management of tens of thousands of tons of commercial and defense radioactive waste stockpiled around the country. Until then, industry representatives and other issue watchers are left waiting to see how the administration approaches the issue.
“I couldn’t tell you. I wish I could. Every situation right now in a lot of these areas is very dynamic and we’re waiting like everybody else to get some signs,” Dan Burns, senior vice president of planning and business development at Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, said this week at the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix.
Waste Control Specialists and Holtec International are planning separate repsoitories for consolidated interim storage of spent reactor fuel that would ultimately go into a permanent repository. The Department of Energy is legally responsible to deal with the waste, which stands at about 75,000 metric tons and is growing by about 2,000 each year. The answer was supposed to be the Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada, which the Obama administration canceled in 2010 and later replaced with a plan to build separate storage sites for defense and commercial waste.
Since day one, the Trump administration has signaled the possibility of resuming the licensing process for Yucca Mountain. Immediately following the election, Trump’s transition team asked the Energy Department for specifics on Yucca Mountain, specifically if there are any statutory restrictions to restarting licensing at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and if DOE has a restart plan in place.
Further signal has come from Republicans in Congress. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which holds congressional jurisdiction over nuclear waste management, announced in late February that he is preparing legislation aimed at restarting licensing efforts for Yucca Mountain. According to Shimkus’ office, the bill would address controversial land and water rights in Nevada that the Energy Department has said make the project “unworkable.” Shimkus hopes to introduce the legislation before the August recess.
The retirement of anti-Yucca Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), as well as continued Republican control of both the House and Senate, also bode well for a potential Yucca Mountain revival.
Perry, during his Senate confirmation hearing in January, did not rule out the prospect of Nevada storing high-level radioactive waste, despite attacks from Nevada lawmakers demanding that DOE leave Yucca Mountain in its grave. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) pressed the nominee on the matter, saying her state would relentlessly oppose any move to resume the licensing process.
“I understand where you all are coming from,” Perry responded. “I’m going to work very closely with you and the members of this committee to find the answers to these challenges that we have, and hopefully this is the beginning of seeing real movement, real management of an issue that I think no longer can set … one that mus be addressed. And I think that we can find a solution, both in the interim and in the long term of our nuclear waste.”
Ultimately, both Cortez Masto and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) voted in favor of Perry’s confirmation.
All interested parties are now waiting on direction from Perry, who will lead any efforts on Yucca Mountain, as well as interim storage for nuclear waste. The Obama administration’s alternative to Yucca Mountain favored a consent-based siting approach, in which host states agree to store nuclear waste on a decades-long interim basis leading up to the development of one or more permanent repositories, which would also require consent from the host state.
Waste Control Specialists has already filed its license application with the NRC for a 40-year license for a facility that would hold 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel now stored at commercial reactor sites around the country. If approved, the facility would be built in eight phases at WCS’ waste storage complex near Andrews, Texas, with operations starting in 2021. Holtec International plans by the end of this month to submit a license application for a 120,000-ton-capacity facility in New Mexico, about 12 miles away from DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.
Perry was instrumental in promoting nuclear waste storage in Texas and has a relationship with WCS that dates to at least the early 2000s. In 2003, he signed a controversial law that allowed WCS to convert a state-run, low-level nuclear waste facility into a private venture. In his 2012 presidential bid, Perry received $1.25 million in campaign contributions from late WCS owner and Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons.
