NUCLEAR SHUTDOWNS DOMINATES ENERGY APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
3/28/2014
The Congressional appropriations process may go faster this year than in previous years, according to House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). The Appropriations Committee is making an effort to hasten the pace of its effort to try and complete spending bills by the beginning of Fiscal Year 2015 in October—something that has not happened in recent years. “I will say this is an accelerated hearing schedule we are having throughout all the Appropriations bills because we are actually going to try something new this year in both the House and the Senate and that is to do our job and do it on time,” Simpson said this week during a subcommittee hearing on DOE’s applied energy budget requests. “We are trying to get appropriations done so you know what your budgets will be when the first of the fiscal year rolls around. We are having accelerated hearings in all of the subcommittees so it makes a lot of conflicts going on for our members as we try to get this done, and I think the hearing schedule is that the middle of April we will be done with that, and then we will start marking up appropriations bills to try and get them to the floor. Of course, a lot of it depends on the floor time that is available in the House and Senate.”
Subcommittee Focuses on Nuclear Shutdowns
During this week’s subcommittee hearing, many lawmakers expressed concern over the harsh economic environment facing nuclear power. Both Simpson and Ranking Member Marcy Kaptur (D- Ohio) asked DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Pete Lyons about the Department’s views of the recent wave of announced nuclear plant shutdowns. “I’m very concerned about how nuclear will fare in light of current projected natural gas prices in region’s like my own, which is not in a regulated environment,” Kaptur said. “The possibility of thousands of lost jobs hangs in the balance as well as the taxes, and I’m wondering how nuclear will fare in light of the current and projected natural gas prices.”
Lyons said the Department is “certainly concerned” with the trend. “Nuclear power provides over 60 percent of this country’s low-carbon electricity,” Lyons said in his opening statement. “The shutdown of these power plants is therefore a significant loss of low-carbon electricity. Beyond emissions, these closed nuclear power plants are a considerable loss of baseload electricity supply and a loss of energy diversity. America’s nuclear power fleet is a national asset on many fronts, and our programs continue to ensure nuclear remains a key player in America’s clean energy future,” he said.
Lack of Discussion on DOE’s Nuclear Waste Management Plan
Noticeably absent from the hearing was any discussion on the Department’s nuclear waste management strategy going forward. DOE’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget request includes $30 million to support the program, of which $24 million would come from the Nuclear Waste Fund. The Obama Administration is seeking to access the funds in the Nuclear Waste Fund to help off-set some off the costs of implementing pilot interim waste storage facilities. The request includes a proposal to ‘reform’ how the fund is used as a way to tap into the NWF’s resources. The fund currently stands at approximately $36 billion, but can only be used for activities related to the construction of a repository at Yucca Mountain, as outlined in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Long-Term Storage of High Burnup Fuel Study Needs Dry-Handling Capabilities
Simpson did, however, broach the topic of DOE’s long-term storage of high burnup fuel study, for which DOE requested a $9 million increase for FY2015. The vast majority of the study will take place in Idaho, where the dry casks will be monitored for years into the future. “It’s a very important effort well-underway within the Office of Nuclear Energy now … to develop a stronger and better understanding of what could be degradation mechanisms for fuel stored in dry casks,” Lyons said. “In order to [study] that longer, although we will put some instrumentations in the casks, there is going to be a need to open those casks under a dry environment, and in general, when such casks are handled, they are handled under water in anything but a dry environment. We must development the capability for dry-handling of the dry casks, keeping it dry, and then being able to evaluate any changes in the fuel structure. Idaho has some facilities, the INTEC facilities, we believe can be modified to open a dry cask in a safe configuration,” he said.