The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December spent $1,566 of its remaining balance from the fund intended to pay the agency’s licensing activities for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.
That left the industry regulator with an unobligated, unexpended balance of $412,552, according to its latest report to Congress, posted this week on the NRC website.
The majority of the December spending, $1,315, was for unspecified program planning and support. The NRC spent the remaining $251 on federal court litigation – possibly related to its successful defense against the state of Nevada’s petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that Commissioner David Wright recuse himself from any decision-making on Yucca Mountain licensing.
The NRC in 2008 received a Department of Energy license application for a permanent disposal facility about 100 miles from Las Vegas for high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations and spent fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors. The Obama administration defunded the licensing program two years later, but the D.C. Circuit appeals court in August 2013 ordered the NRC to proceed with the process.
At that time, the agency had a carry-over balance of just over $13.5 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund. As of December, it has spent roughly $13.1 million. That included nearly $8.4 million to complete a safety evaluation report for the project, over $1.5 million to prepare a supplement to the DOE environmental impact statement for the geologic repository, and more than $1.1 million to load documents from the database for the licensing proceeding into the NRC’s public documents library.
Of the full remaining balance of $442,473, $29,921 is already committed, the report says.
The NRC has said it does not have enough money to adjudicate the Yucca Mountain license application, should it be resumed. Both DOE and the NRC proposed funds for fiscal 2018 and the current fiscal 2019 to restart the process. Congress rejected any such appropriations.
The Nuclear Waste Fund in whole held $39.2 billion in U.S. Treasuries at the end of fiscal 2018 on Sept. 30, to pay for licensing, development, and construction of the waste repository, according to the latest audit from the Department of Energy.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday formally rejected a petition to establish a rule requiring nuclear sites to evaluate and address seismic and flooding dangers once per decade.
The nongovernmental Natural Resources Defense Council filed the petition on July 26, 2011, just over four months after an earthquake and tsunami caused three reactors to melt down at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan.
“The petitioner requested that the NRC amend its regulations to require nuclear facilities licensed under 10 CFR parts 50, 52, and 100, and other applicable regulations, to confirm seismic hazards and flooding hazards every 10 years and to address any new and significant information, which would include, if necessary, updating the design basis for structures, systems, and components (SSCs) important to safety to protect against the updated hazards,” the NRC said in a Federal Register notice dated Feb. 6.
The Natural Resources Defense Council said it based the request on a recommendation from a post-Fukushima task force established by the NRC.
The agency denied the petition because there are avenues beyond rulemaking for addressing the recommendation, the Federal Register notice says. The commission has already signed off on a staff method for augmenting existing systems to ensure consideration of updated information regarding natural dangers to nuclear power plants, in line with the task force recommendation.
On Jan. 24, the commission voted 3-2 to approve a separate post-Fukushima rule intended to increase safety at nuclear power plants. In their dissent, Commissioners Stephen Burns and Jeff Baran said the new rule fails to require that NRC licensees incorporate new data on flooding and earthquake dangers in plans for mitigating “beyond-design-basis” events.
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