Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) on Wednesday placed blame squarely on Democrats for the ongoing freeze in licensing and then building a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev.
“The project boasts support in Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located. So why hasn’t it moved forward? Politics,” Barrasso wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “During the Obama administration, the president and Senate Democratic leadership choked off funding, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stopped work in January 2015. More recently, Democratic senators running for president have opposed the project in an effort to appeal to liberals in Nevada, an early caucus state.”
Just two years after the Department of Energy filed its 2008 license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the underground disposal site, the Obama administration defunded the entire proceeding. It subsequently initiated a “consent-based” approach for siting separate repositories for defense and commercial nuclear waste, but time ran out on that program when President Donald Trump took office in January 2017.
The Trump administration has in the last three budget cycles requested congressional appropriations for both agencies to resume licensing for Yucca Mountain, so far to no avail.
The House supported the last two requests, for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, but could not overcome opposition from the Senate. However, after retaking the House majority in the November midterm elections, Democrats for fiscal 2020 zeroed out the roughly $150 million White House request for repository licensing in an energy bill approved last week by the lower chamber’s Appropriations Committee. That legislation could get a House floor vote in June. The Senate has not yet unveiled its version of the energy and water development appropriations measure for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
Meanwhile, while passing through Nevada in campaigning this year, candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president have voiced opposition to making the state the unwilling host to other states’ nuclear waste.
In his commentary, Barrasso called for an end to “political games” on Yucca Mountain. The lawmaker noted that he has prepared legislation that would advance both interim storage of radioactive waste and final disposal under Yucca Mountain. The legislation, a slightly modified version of a bill filed by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) in the last Congress, had not been introduced as of deadline Friday.
“The lack of progress on Yucca Mountain has become a roadblock for nuclear power in America. Eight states have passed laws against building new nuclear plants until the federal government demonstrates it will dispose of spent nuclear fuel,” Barrasso wrote. “This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Nuclear power is vital to the nation’s power supply—and to addressing climate change.”
The U.S. government has paid out about $7.4 billion to nuclear power reactor owners for failing to meet its legal obligation to take their spent reactor fuel for disposal, the Congressional Research Service said in a new paper.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the Department of Energy until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin disposal of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear activities. Today that represents a stockpile of about 100,000 metric tons of waste, but there is still no repository. Licensing of DOE’s planned disposal site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., has been defunded for the better part of a decade, and there is no assurance it will resume.
The 1982 law “authorized DOE to enter into agreements with nuclear utilities and other reactor owners to collect fees to pay for DOE’s disposal of the SNF,” the CNS report says. “However, due to the delay in operation of a permanent repository, the federal government has paid roughly $7.4 billion from the Judgment Fund to nuclear utilities and other reactor owners pursuant to court settlements and final judgments through FY2018.”
Members of Congress, in arguing to resume the Yucca Mountain license proceeding, have said recently the federal liability accumulates at a rate of roughly $2 million per day.
There are currently 80 locations around the United States with nuclear waste, encompassing spent fuel at active reactor sites, spent fuel at retired reactor plants, and waste at DOE-managed or owned properties, the report says.
The Port Hope Project in April resumed remediation of radioactively contaminated private properties in the municipality in Ontario, Canada.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ (CNL) Port Hope Area Initiative is testing all private properties in Port Hope for low-level radioactive waste, left by uranium and radium refining during the 20th century. To date, roughly 1,000 sites are known to require remediation. Testing is expected to continue for two years, after which CNL anticipates it will have identified roughly 1,200 properties requiring remediation, project spokesman Bill Daily said by email Wednesday.
So far, project contractors have cleaned up 10 properties.
“Work on residential properties resumed in April of this year, with exterior cleanups on 30 properties currently underway,” Daly wrote. “The work on these properties includes removal of structures such as decks and natural features like shrubs and trees, followed by excavation of front and back yards to remove the historic low-level radioactive waste. Once the waste has been removed, the property is restored and any structures are rebuilt at no cost to the home owner.”
Exterior remediation of an additional 50 to 70 locations is anticipated in 2019, focusing on removal of soil contaminated by wastes including radium-226, uranium, thorium, and arsenic. The amount of work necessary will differ based on location, according to Daly. Some properties will need extensive soil excavation and restoration, while others have only small impacted areas in which waste can be removed via hydro-vacuuming.
The goal is to finish 70 exterior jobs by next March, Daly stated. Interior work on contaminated structures should begin in 2019, but is mostly anticipated in future years, he said.
“Overall, we anticipate that 1.2 million cubic metres of historic low-level radioactive waste will be removed from the urban area of Port Hope for storage at the long-term waste management facility,” Daly stated. “This number is subject to change based on the extent of private property cleanups, which we will only be able to fully determine as we continue to do the remediation.”
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, a nuclear science and technology organization managed by the corporate-led Canadian National Energy Alliance, has issued contracts worth just shy of $20 million (CAD) for property remediation. Milestone Environmental received a $6.8 million deal, while Perma-Fix secured an $11 million contract and ARCADIS got $1 million for hydro-vac jobs. Future contracts are planned for remaining property remediation work.
The property cleanup is one aspect of a $1.3 billion CAD ($961 million) remediation of Port Hope and the nearby Clarington. Work is currently scheduled to be complete in 2025.
Additional activities in Port Hope are ongoing, Daly stated. Projects include preparations to dredge Port Hope Harbor in the fall, demolition and removal of decommissioned waste treatment facilities in the West Beach; and transport of material to the Long-Term Waste Management Facility in Port Hope, some cells of which are still being built by contractor ECC/Quantum Murray.
From The Wires
From The San Diego Union-Tribune: Elevated radiation levels found in giant clams close to U.S. nuclear waste site near Marshall Islands.
From Bloomberg Environment: Ohio House passes legislative subsidies for nuclear power plants in state.
From Connexion: Greenpeace publishes map of nuclear waste sites in France.
