For the second time, the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday approved four nominees for senior Department of Energy positions, including Rita Baranwal as assistant secretary for nuclear energy.
By voice vote Thursday, the panel advanced all four to the full Senate. A committee press release did not say when the Senate might take action, but the nongovernmental Energy Communities Alliance said confirmation votes are anticipated this month.
Along with Baranwal, the nominees are: William Cooper, for the position of DOE general counsel; Christopher Fall, as director of the Office of Science; and Lane Genatowski, as director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).
The committee previously reported the nominees to the Senate at different points in 2018. But the Senate did not vote on any of the nominations before the 115th Congress ended on Jan. 3, thus automatically sending all four back to the president. The White House resubmitted the nominations in mid-January.
Since August 2016, Baranwal has been director of the Energy Department’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program, which provides funding and other resources in support of research and development of nuclear energy technologies
If the full Senate confirms her, Baranwal would assume leadership of an office with a budget of $1.3 billion for the current fiscal year through Sept. 30. The Office of Nuclear Energy manages several programs to advance nuclear power technologies, including the GAIN initiative. Following the dissolution of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management during the Obama administration, the Office of Nuclear Energy has the lead in meeting the agency’s legal mandate to dispose of the nation’s spent nuclear power reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
The office would presumably be charged with overseeing the DOE license application for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada if that process is revived.
Two years after the proceeding began, the Obama administration in 2010 defunded licensing at DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Trump administration has twice requested that Congress appropriate new funds for the two agencies to restart licensing, but was rebuffed both times. It is expected to try again in the upcoming budget request for the 2020 federal fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is scheduled on March 25 to announce the enforcement measures it will take in response to a spent fuel loading mishap at the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California.
During the public webinar, NRC staff will provide details on the results of a special inspection opened in the wake of the Aug. 3 incident, according to an agency press release. They will also discuss initial determinations of the NRC’s oversight of corrective measures SONGS majority owner and licensee Southern California Edison has taken.
The webinar is scheduled for noon to 3 p.m. Pacific time. It is open to the public, but requires registration.
San Onofre was permanently closed in 2013, and Southern California Edison in 2014 hired energy technology company Holtec International to move spent fuel from reactor Units 2 and 3 from wet to dry storage.
On Aug. 3, a fuel canister was being placed into a below-ground slot in the independent spent fuel installation. The canister’s rigging went askew so the container could not go smoothly into the silo. The error was not identified and corrected for nearly an hour, leaving the canister vulnerable to a drop of nearly 20 feet.
In a special inspection report issued in November, the NRC cited two potential violations that could lead to fines or other enforcemente measures: Southern California Edison did not ensure it had additional gear on hand to prevent a canister drop of up to 18 feet and did not report the situation to the agency within the required 24-hour period.
Southern California Edison does not know what actions the NRC will announce, spokesman John Dobken said Thursday.
“Canister-loading operations at San Onofre, currently on hold, will resume only after SCE is satisfied that our team has successfully demonstrated fuel transfer can proceed utilizing the new procedures, training and technology, and the NRC has completed its inspection work,” the company said in a statement.
A number of operational improvements have been made in the fuel-loading operation, SCE says, including: a revised training program, updated operational procedures, added personnel, and increased monitoring technology.
The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) has requested cooperating agency status in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s preparation of an environmental impact statement for the license application for a spent nuclear fuel storage facility planned for the state.
Then-NMED Secretary-designate James Kenney made the request in a Feb. 14 letter to the NRC, which was posted Tuesday to the federal agency’s website. The New Mexico Senate confirmed Kenney to the job later in February.
New Jersey-based energy technology company Holtec International has applied for a 40-year license to store up to 173,000 metric tons of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors. The regulator anticipates it will in mid-2020 complete the technical review, which covers environmental, safety, and security evaluations.
There is now roughly 80,000 metric tons of the radioactive waste held on-site at power plants around the nation. The Department of Energy is more than two decades beyond its congressional mandated deadline of Jan. 31, 1998, to begin removing that material for disposal. Proposed interim sites in New Mexico and Texas could help the agency finally meet its legal requirement in the absence of a permanent repository.
In his letter, Kenney said NMED meets the definition of a cooperating agency as laid out in federal regulations for the NRC – an agency with “jurisdiction by law or special expertise with respect to any environmental impact involved in a proposal (or a reasonable alternative) for legislation or other major Federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.” That regulation applies directly to federal agencies, but with NRC concurrence can be expanded to state, local, or tribal entities.
“NMED recently requested to be vested with Cooperating Agency status during the Holtec Environmental Impact Statement process so that NMED would have the ability to provide its input based upon its areas of specialized expertise and as the state environmental agency in which the facility would be located,” spokeswoman Maddy Hayden said by email.
The NRC is reviewing the request, an agency spokesman said by email. “The type and extent of the assistance [in preparing the environmental impact statement] would depend on the State’s jurisdiction and special expertise,” he said.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had a $408,479 unspent, unobligated balance from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the end of January, according to the agency’s latest monthly update to Congress.
The NRC spent $4,073 in January: $2,444 for unspecified program planning and support and the remaining $1,629 on federal litigation.
Established by Congress in 1982, the Nuclear Waste Fund it intended to pay for licensing, development, and construction of a permanent repository for U.S. spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The Department of Energy in 2008 applied for an NRC license for a facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later.
The NRC had a Nuclear Waste Fund balance of more than $13.5 million in August 2013, when an appeals court ordered it to resume licensing activities. It has since spent more than $13.1 million of that, primarily on a safety evaluation report on the project, a supplement to a DOE environmental impact statement for the repository, and loading documents from the license adjudication into the agency’s online database.
The remaining $438,400 balance covers $29,921 that has been committed, the update says.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would require additional congressional appropriations from the Nuclear Waste Fund to resume licensing. Congress has twice rejected Trump administration budget requests to provide DOE and the NRC with funds to restart that proceeding.
