A panel of the Wyoming Legislature is recommending that lawmakers consider new legislation that would advance tentative plans for a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in the state.
The recommendations are included in a report submitted for next week’s meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Minerals, Business, and Economic Development Committee.
Specifically, according to the committee’s Spent Fuel Rods Subcommittee: The full panel should consider enabling legislation authorizing additional evaluation of an interim facility for dry-cask storage of used fuel in Wyoming, along with a bill allowing state agencies to start talks with the federal government on licensing and constructing of such a site.
State regulations on radioactive waste storage facilities would also have to be revised to allow for the spent fuel operation, the subcommittee said. Specifically, Wyoming Statute 35-11-1506(e)(i) says such a facility can be authorized solely if “operated on the site of and to store the waste produced by a nuclear power generation facility operating within the state.”
Wyoming has no nuclear power plants. Even if it did, the vast majority of spent fuel accepted for storage would come from other states.
The subcommittee, during a meeting in September, “discussed the need to repeal that paragraph before a temporary storage facility and agreement with the Department of Energy could proceed,” according to the report from the seven-member panel, consisting of Republicans from both chambers of the state Legislature.
Congress in 1982 put the U.S. Department of Energy on the hook to find a permanent disposal site for the nation’s growing stockpile of used fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. There is now over 80,000 metric tons of spent fuel assemblies stranded at sites around the nation, but the Energy Department has not yet secured a license to build and operate a geologic repository at the congressionally mandated location under Yucca Mountain, Nev.
In the absence of permanent disposal, consolidated interim storage is seen as a temporary means for DOE to meet its legal mandate.
Then-Wyoming Gov. Mike Sullivan in 1992 vetoed an effort to establish “monitored retrievable storage” for used fuel in Fremont County. The idea, though, got new life over the summer, advanced by state Sen. Jim Anderson (R). The state Legislature’s bicameral Management Council, in a 7-6 vote in July, authorized formation of the subcommittee to study the issue, with Anderson as chairman.
Wyoming would become a potential new entrant into the current competition to become temporary home to some portion of U.S. used fuel, about 2,000 metric tons of which is generated each year. Separate corporate teams have already applied for Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses to build and operate facilities in Texas and New Mexico. With federal approval, they could begin storage in the early 2020s.
Advocates, led by Anderson, see potential spent fuel storage as one means of offsetting the Wyoming’s troubled coal and uranium mining industries. Two mines closed on July 1 after owner Blackjewel declared bankruptcy.
However, spent fuel storage has been estimated to only generate $10 million in annual revenue for the state. That number is based on language from the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which assigned disposal responsibility to DOE and established the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the repository. The law restricts payments to a hosting state: $5 million before the initial shipment of waste, $10 million after that shipment arrives, and then $10 million annually afterward, Energy Department officials said during the September meeting.
“The speakers noted that Congress could appropriate general funds for additional payments to the state,” the subcommittee report says. “They also noted the possibility of a legal challenge by utility ratepayers who contributed to the Nuclear Waste Fund if the funds meant for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain are used to pay a state for temporary storage.”
Anderson has discussed negotiating with the Department of Energy to increase payments to the state, according to the Casper Star-Tribune. The companies working on the Texas and New Mexico projects have also floated the idea of contracting directly with the nuclear utilities that own the used fuel.
One industry source played down the seriousness of the latest effort in Wyoming, noting the past failure in the state in the face of public opposition. In its report, the subcommittee acknowledged that speakers from the public at the September meeting and online commenters had primarily been against a spent fuel facility in the state. They raised concerns that have been addressed to the Texas and New Mexico projects, including whether interim storage could become permanent if the federal government cannot establish a repository.
There is so far no state appropriation to advance a potential storage project, the source said. The next legislative session begins in February.
“You want to be serious about something, put your money where your mouth is,” the source said.
The Minerals, Business, and Economic Development Committee is scheduled to discuss the subcommittee report on the second day of its meeting, at 10:15 a.m. local time Tuesday.
