Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) latest legislative push to establish a pilot program for interim storage of radioactive waste got stuck in Senate gridlock this week when the big, bipartisan energy bill stalled out amid a fight about climate change.
Feinstein’s proposal was one of many amendments being balled up into a legislative package known as the American Energy Innovation Act — or, as it is widely known in Washington, the energy bill. Feinstein’s amendment, numbered SA 1360, was proposed to the energy bill’s shell legislation, which Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) filed in October.
The package looked like a lock to pass as recently as Monday morning, but a fracas that evening over one amendment — a bipartisan proposal to limit use of heat-trapping hydrofluorocarbons coolants found in air conditions and refrigerators — prompted Democrats en bloc, and many Republicans, to vote against ending debate.
If approved by Congress, the Feinstein amendment would authorize the secretary of energy to establish a pilot program for licensing, building, and operating at least one federal facility for interim storage of used fuel and high-level waste. The amendment would also direct the Department of Energy to within 120 days of bill passage issue a request for proposals for a cooperative agreement under which the partnering entity would apply for Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing of one or more storage sites.
Within 120 days of release of the RFP, the energy secretary would be required to provide Congress with a plan covering the licensing, construction, and operations costs for the facility; a schedule for NRC licensing, operations, and eventual closure and decommissioning; and other aspects of the project.
Siting would require approval from the governor of the state in which the facility would be built, along with impacted local governments and Indian tribes.
Funds for this work could be drawn from the Nuclear Waste Fund, subject to congressional appropriations, the amendment says.
On Monday evening, senators voted 75-15 against ending debate on the package of amendments intended to become the text of the energy bill. Only 15 senators voted in favor, all Republicans, while 12 senators did not vote at all. Until and unless senators vote to invoke cloture and end debate, the package will not get a final vote on the Senate floor.
The language of SA 1360 is largely the same as that found in appropriations bills and other legislation crafted by Feinstein, Murkowski, and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) in recent years. The measures are all intended to push the Department of Energy toward meeting its legal mandate to do something with the nation’s radioactive waste; none have passed.
An Idaho congressman on Tuesday said he believes Congress again will choose to keep a nuclear cleanup program with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, instead of allowing it to be transferred to the Department of Energy.
The program is the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), which manages remediation of properties contaminated from the 1940s to 1960s by federal nuclear weapons and nuclear energy projects.
In budget requests for the current fiscal 2020 and the upcoming fiscal 2021, the Trump administration has proposed shifting management and funding for the program to DOE from the Army Corps. The Army Corps would continue to handle the actual site work, reimbursed by the Energy Department.
Congress rejected the proposal in 2020 appropriations legislation signed into law in December. In a Tuesday hearing on the Army Corps of Engineers’ spending plan for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, House Armed Services energy and water subcommittee Ranking Member Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said Congress “is likely to” keep the FUSRAP budget with the Army Corps. He did not elaborate, and the subject was not further discussed at the hearing.
The Energy Department ran the program until 1997, when Congress transferred it to the Army Corps. FUSRAP manages 23 active cleanup sites in 10 states. It is budgeted at $200 million for the federal budget year ending Sept. 30. The Energy Department wants $150 million in fiscal 2021.
Under the administration plan for 2021, FUSRAP would be managed by DOE’s Office of Legacy Management, which already determines which sites are eligible for inclusion in FUSRAP and conducts long-term monitoring once cleanup is completed.
Both agencies have touted the benefits of giving DOE ownership of the program, including improved planning and reducing costs for transitioning properties from active cleanup to stewardship;
For two consecutive budget cycles, Simpson has questioned the value in transferring the program.
Army Corps leaders also testified on their latest budget request Wednesday before the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. The FUSRAP issue was not discussed.
Radiation monitors for the public went online Tuesday at the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), majority owner Southern California Edison announced Tuesday.
Three gamma radiation monitors were installed on the San Diego County property in response to long-running public calls for ways to check for potential radiation leaks from spent fuel in dry-cask storage. A fourth monitor was installed off-site provide base data on normal background radiation.
Data from the $300,000 monitoring project is being fed to three off-site agencies: the California Department of Public Health’s Radiologic Health Branch, California State Parks, and the city of San Juan Capistrano. The health department will post a monthly report on the monitor readings to its website for the public to read, SCE said.
“We’re committed to sharing information during decommissioning. That’s why we’ve worked with our community and agency partners to install this system to enable public agencies to monitor radiation dose readings. Going above and beyond Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements to share this data with local agencies is consistent with our goals of keeping the public informed,” said Ron Pontes, SCE manager of environmental decommissioning strategy, said Edison in a press release.
The only other U.S. nuclear plant with such a system is Prairie Island in Minnesota.
Southern California Edison closed SONGS in 2013 after faulty steam generators were installed in its last two operational reactors. Major decommissioning operations began at the end of February, under contractor SONGS Decommissioning Solutions, and are scheduled to be complete in 2028.
Transfer of the two reactors’ used fuel into dry storage is expected to wrap up this summer, after being suspended for nearly a year following an August 2018 mishap in which one canister was left at risk of an 18-foot drop into its storage slot. To date, 53 of 73 canisters have been moved to the storage pad, with the 54th scheduled to be moved today.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January spent just $219 of its remaining balance from the Nuclear Waste Fund.
That left the agency with a balance of $430,978 from the fund intended to pay for a national repository for high-level waste from defense nuclear operations and spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants.
“While there are no significant actions to report for the months, the NRC provided limited program planning and support activities that resulted in nominal expenditures,” Chairman Kristine Svinicki wrote in a Feb. 27 letter attached to the agency’s latest Nuclear Waste Fund spending report to Congress.
For the past year, the NRC has limited monthly spending to a few hundred dollars for unspecified program planning and support.
The agency is the adjudicator for the Department of Energy’s 2008 license application for the geologic repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev. However, the proceeding has been frozen since being defunded by the Obama administration in 2010.
In three successive budget requests, the Trump administration asked Congress to appropriate money to resume licensing at DOE and the NRC. Lawmakers rejected each proposal. For the upcoming fiscal 2021, the administration has forgone trying to revive Yucca Mountain in favor of a $27.5 million ask focused on promoting centralized, interim storage of nuclear waste ahead of a repository.
A federal appeals court in August 2013 ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume work on the license application, even though the Energy Department was not pursuing the project. The NRC at the time had over $13.5 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund. It has subsequently spent more than $13.1 million, with major expenditures including $8.4 million to complete a safety evaluation report on licensing and nearly $1.6 million for a supplement to the environmental impact statement for Yucca Mountain.
Minus further appropriations from Congress, the agency’s remaining balance will continue to slowly dwindle.
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