Some House Democrats told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a hearing Wednesday that development of new nuclear power plants should be yoked to development of a permanent nuclear waste storage facility.
In the same hearing of the House Energy and Commerce energy, climate and grid security subcommittee, another Democrat, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), urged the NRC chair to make sure the NRC’s final decommissioning rule, expected this October or November, carved out more mandatory public participation in nuclear power plant decommissioning.
House Republicans, who control the chamber, called Wednesday’s hearing to discuss the NRC’s regulatory efficiency, of which Republican members and even the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat were critical. The GOP majority wants the NRC to enable, not impede, a nuclear renaissance that could include a slate of new reactor designs queueing up at the agency for regulatory approval.
Some Democrats on the subcommittee used the hearing to condition support for a potential U.S. nuclear build-up on the creation of radioactive waste storage facilities that the current Congress has shown no appetite for creating and which two states have outlawed in recent years.
There should be a “long term strategy to deal with the spent fuel” from nuclear power plants before Congress helps encourage development of new plants powered by advanced nuclear reactors, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said during the hearing. DeGette also acknowledged Wednesday that the NRC’s regulatory processes for new and existing power plants are “overly burdensome.”
But without a permanent storage facility for high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel, “I frankly don’t see a way that nuclear energy will become a significant part of our clean energy future,” said DeGette.
Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) also joined this chorus, telling the commission that “we must address the waste question” and “the first step is to build a consolidated interim storage site.”
Matsui said that she supported the NRC’s legal authority to license a commercially operated interim storage site, which NRC has twice done in the past two years, but that the reason nobody has yet built one in the U.S. is because of “the failure of Congress to pursue a consent-based siting process for consolidated storage facilities.”
The NRC in May licensed Holtec International to build an interim spent fuel storage site in eastern New Mexico. In 2021, the commission licensed Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Oranao and Waste Control Specialists, to build a similar facility in west Texas. Both Texas and New Mexico outlawed storage of spent nuclear fuel in their borders the same years the NRC licensed the two interim storage sites.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) made opposition to the current crop of licensed interim storage sites a bipartisan activity.
“We have to be very careful about where we’re putting high level nuclear waste and I personally am not in agreement with doing more” at Waste Control Specialists’ Andrews Country, Texas, facility, Pfluger said.
Waste Control Specialists has stored low-level radioactive waste near the New Mexico border for more than 10 years. The company also operates a Texas state-owned radioactive waste disposal cell at its Andrews County facility.
The Department of Energy is required by law to dispose of spent nuclear fuel in a deep geological repository but for more than 30 years has been unable to do so because of political resistance for Nevada, home of the only congressionally authorized repository site in the U.S.
DOE last week began the early work of defining exactly what consent means when it comes to consent based siting: something that in New Mexico and Texas would have to include the consent of state governments, unless recent laws banning interim storage in those states are subjected to court challenges and lose, as at least Holtec believes they would.