The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has less than $500,000 left in its available balance from the Nuclear Waste Fund, which pays for the agency’s work on the proposed Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository in Nevada.
In its latest update to Congress on activities related to licensing of Yucca Mountain, the NRC said its unobligated Nuclear Waste Fund balance stood at $491,635 as of Jan. 31. The agency spent $11,570 in January: $9,659 for planning a Feb. 27-28 meeting of the Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel and information collection on possible venues should the NRC resume adjudication of the Energy Department licensing application for the disposal facility; plus $1,911 for program planning and support.
The Obama administration halted DOE and NRC licensing work for Yucca Mountain in 2010, but a federal judge in August 2013 ordered the regulator to resume the licensing process. As of January, the agency had spent $12.97 million of the $13.55 million it had available from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the time of the court ruling. Most of that money went into three projects: completion of a safety evaluation report on Yucca Mountain, loading Yucca-related documents into the NRC’s online data library, and producing a supplement to the environmental impact statement for the program.
Nuclear utilities starting in the 1980s paid more than $30 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund before the Obama administration halted collections under federal court order in 2014. Congress must appropriate money from the fund for DOE and the NRC.
The latest reported spending left the regulator with $552,770 in unexpended funds in January, of which $61,135 was already obligated.
Remaining funds are expected to be used only for limited information gathering until Congress appropriates more money from the Nuclear Waste Fund, an NRC spokesman said in January. The White House requested $30 million for the NRC to resume licensing activities in fiscal 2018, which began on Oct. 1 of last year. The federal government has since then operated on a series of short-term budgets that provide nothing for Yucca Mountain. Congress has also been split on the request, with the House approving the full appropriation and Senate appropriators so far zeroing out funds for Yucca Mountain.
The NRC’s fiscal 2019 budget request seeks nearly $48 million for Yucca licensing work.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday it expects this year to complete the extended, protested contract award process for environmental remediation of the radioactively contaminated Shallow Land Disposal Area in Pennsylvania.
A Jacobs Engineering subsidiary in April 2017 received a $350 million contract under the Army Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) program for cleanup of 21,300 cubic yards of soil, debris, and other radiological waste left in Parks Township from work under contracts for the Atomic Energy Commission, largely production of fuel for nuclear submarines and power plants.
However, at least one contract protest was filed with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and the Army in August 2017 said it would reconsider the bids that had been submitted. That process should be complete in 2018, Capt. Brian Molloy, project manager at Shallow Land, told RadWaste Monitor this week.
Molloy said he could not discuss details of the protest or protests, including the companies involved and their objections to the contract awarded to Jacobs Field Services North America. An Army Corps press release last August cited protests from “Unsuccessful bidders.”
At the time, the Army said the impact of the protests on the cleanup schedule was not immediately known. Molloy said Monday that after the contractor is in place, it would spend one year to 18 months preparing a cleanup work plan. The actual remediation is expected to take eight to 10 years, but that depends on what the Army Corps and its contractor find when remediation begins, he added.
“With the uncertainty of what’s in the ground there there was always uncertainty of how long it’s going to take,” according to Molloy.
Jacobs referred questions on the state of its contract bid back to the Army Corps. BWX Technologies, which owns the 44-acre plot of land, also declined to say whether it had bid on the contract.
Only one of 13 states surveyed recently showed any interest in becoming home to an interim or long-term repository for spent fuel from U.S. commercial nuclear power reactors.
The Natural Resources Defense Council sent a survey on nuclear waste issues to government officials in all 48 states in the continental U.S. Thirteen states responded in full: California, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont. Virginia and Utah also returned partially completed surveys.
Responding to the question of whether “My State could be interested in hosting a consolidated commercial spent fuel storage facility,” nine respondents strongly disagreed, one disagreed, two neither agreed nor disagreed, one agreed, and none strongly agreed.
The results were identical to the question of whether “My State could be interested in hosting a commercial spent fuel repository.”
The first question refers to an interim storage site, while the second refers to a permanent disposal facility along the lines of the long-planned and hotly contested Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada.
There was no support whatsoever for having a nuclear power plant in any of the responding states host a consolidated site for used nuclear fuel from other states: two states neither agreed nor disagreed, three disagreed, seven strongly disagreed, and one answered N/A.
The survey report does not identify the state that indicated it could be interesting in hosting a spent-fuel storage or disposal facility – assuming it was the same state. Officials were told their individual responses would not be identified, said Don Hancock, Nuclear Waste Program director at the nongovernmental Southwest Research and Information Center, who prepared the survey on behalf of the NRDC.
It’s safe to assume Nevada fell on the disagree end of the spectrum of answers. The state government has strongly opposed plans to store the nation’s stockpile of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste below Yucca Mountain.
Missing from the list of respondents were New Mexico and Texas, where plans have been made to open interim storage sites for consolidation of spent reactor fuel from power plants around the country. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week began its full technical review of Holtec International’s license application for a facility in southeastern New Mexico. Waste Control Specialists’ license application for its proposed West Texas site has been on hold since April 2017, at the company’s request.
Respondents to the NRDC survey were also unequivocal in their desire to have greater regulatory authority over nuclear waste sites. On the question of whether states should have additional regulatory authority over storage facilities, six states strongly agreed, six agreed, and one disagreed. For the same question on disposal sites, six strongly agreed, six agreed, one neither agreed nor disagreed, and one disagreed.
“It was almost universal across all the states that they would take on more authority” in areas such as permitting, licensing, standards, and enforcement, said Geoffrey Fettus, a senior attorney with the NRDC’s energy and transportation program.
Salt Lake City-based nuclear services company EnergySolutions said this week it has centralized its decontamination and decommissioning team at an office in Charlotte, N.C.
Roughly 30 employees, who had previously been spread around the nation, are now working in a 16,000-square-foot office on West Trade Street in the city’s downtown.
In a press release, EnergySolutions President Ken Robuck cited the city’s growing economic base, advanced infrastructure, and human resources as driving the selection.
“Opening this office will allow us to consolidate resources we currently have spread across the U.S. and more effectively manage projects in the Eastern and Southern U.S.,” Robuck said. “We are looking forward to supporting the expansion of our business with talent found in the Charlotte area.”
EnergySolutions has about 1,500 employees in the United States and abroad. Its decontamination and decommissioning services include project planning and cost forecasts; low-level radioactive waste characterization, management, and disposal; and facility demolition and site restoration.
From The Wires
From The Salt Lake Tribune: The Utah Senate votes 21-7 in favor of $1.7 million annual fee break for EnergySolutions, putting decision in Gov. Gary Herbert’s hands.
From the San Diego Union-Tribune: Former California Public Utilities Commission president denies any secret deal for since-rescinded closure settlement for San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
From KPBS: The California Public Utilities Commission should reject the latest settlement for SONGS’ premature shutdown, watchdog group says.
