The House of Representatives’ Science, Space, and Technology Committee last week advanced legislation that would assign the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to assist in disposal of radioactive waste.
Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson’s (D-Texas) ARPA-E Reauthorization Act of 2019 now awaits action by the full House. There was no word this week on the potential schedule for consideration.
The bill would make a set of changes to the 2007 America Competes Act that established the Energy Department branch. Among those is directing ARPA-E to provide “transformative solutions to improve the management, clean-up, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.”
Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), the committee’s ranking Republican, had introduced a competing bill that would have offered slightly different language on radioactive waste: “provide transformative solutions to improve the management, clean-up, and disposal of (I) low-level radioactive waste; (II) spent nuclear fuel; and (III) high-level radioactive waste.” However, Lucas and Johnson said on Oct. 17 they had reached a compromise under which he would support her bill.
Toward that, the committee approved an amendment from Johnson with several changes to her legislation. Most notably, the amendment lowers the amount of funding ARPA-E would be authorized to receive from fiscal years 2020 to 2024. The original bill set the annual numbers at $550 million for 2021, $675 million for 2022, $825 million for 2023, and $1 billion for 2024. The amendment revises those to $497 million for 2021, $567 million for 2022, $651 million for 2023, and $750 million for 2024. Those amounts are closer to the authorization figures in Lucas’ bill, which topped out at $500 million in fiscal 2024.
ARPA-E’s mission is to advance development of energy technologies ahead of commercial investment. The Trump administration Energy Department has sought to fully defund the agency, but Congress continues to provide annual appropriations.
“ARPA-E has already demonstrated incredible success in advancing high-risk, high-reward energy technology solutions that neither the public sector nor the private sector have been willing or able to support in the past,” Johnson said ahead of the unanimous voice vote on the bill.
She said new companies have been formed around 76 projects, among other benefits.
The members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are considering a staff recommendation to terminate a limited update to regulations on security of special nuclear material.
“The staff conducted a preliminary cost and benefit analysis in which it has identified that the rulemaking is not cost justified,” Margaret Doane, NRC executive director for operations, wrote in an Oct. 1 memo to the commissioners. “If the rulemaking proceeds, both NRC and industry would incur cost without any increase in public health and safety or the common defense and security.”
Special nuclear material contains fissile isotopes – specifically uranium-233, uranium-235, and plutonium-239 – that when concentrated could be used in a nuclear weapon.
The commission in August 2018 approved the rulemaking as a slimmed-down version of a process begun in 2006. The rulemaking as of last year was intended only to codify the directives of security orders issued to NRC fuel cycle facility and special nuclear material licensees following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Among the requirements of those orders were augmented security patrols and higher numbers of on-site security posts, physical barriers, and intrusion detection systems. Fuel-cycle operators were also directed to assess their cybersecurity capabilities.
The rulemaking would have applied only to possessors of Category I (strategic) and Category III (low strategic significance) levels of special nuclear material. Post-Sept. 11 security orders were not issued to Category II (moderate strategic significance) licensees, so they were not covered in the regulatory update.
However, the NRC said staff determined in a preliminary cost analysis that the expense of the rulemaking would outstrip its potential benefits by $770,000. The post-Sept. 11 directives had also addressed the needed security improvements, they said.
The staff recommendation “is pending commission action,” an NRC spokesman said by email Tuesday, without discussing any potential schedule for a decision.
With approval from the commission, the NRC would issue a Federal Register notice explaining the rulemaking discontinuation.
From The Wires
From the Toledo, Ohio, Blade: A federal judge won’t allow more time for signature-gathering for a planned state referendum on legislation passed earlier this year to prop up nuclear power plants in Ohio.
From Reuters: Radiation safety regulator authorizes expansion of waste repository in Sweden.
