RadWaste Monitor Vol. 13 No. 44
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RadWaste & Materials Monitor
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November 13, 2020

Biden Transition Announcements Largely Skirt Nuclear Power, Waste Issues

By ExchangeMonitor

President-elect Joe Biden unveiled his transition team this week, and though the landing team bound for the Department of Energy was 20 deep and stacked with nuclear-savvy ex-DOEers, the announcement revealed little about the incoming chief-executive’s thinking on nuclear waste issues.

On the website, President-elect Biden outlines plans to drive cost reductions in clean energy technologies. He mentions advanced nuclear as one technology to “rapidly commercialize” among a number of other options.

That’s about the extent of the nuclear talk, however — President-elect Biden didn’t make mention of spent fuel disposal facilities, like Yucca Mountain, for example.

Supporting Yucca Mountain has only gotten more challenging in the last eight years, and it figures to remain so. For a Democratic president facing a narrow margin in the Senate, Nevada’s two stridently anti-Yucca votes could play like kingmakers in any legislative debate.

Even President Donald Trump, whose administration came into office determined to reverse the Obama administration’s move to freeze DOE’s application to license Yucca as a permanent waste repository, eventually gave up on trying to resuscitate the project. 

In 2019, with campaign season ramping up, Trump tweeted: “Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you! Congress and previous Administrations have long failed to find lasting solutions – my Administration is committed to exploring innovative approaches – I’m confident we can get it done!”

The Biden campaign in a response statement chastised Trump’s initial approval of funding for the project.

“My dad used to say ‘don’t just tell me what you value, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.’ Well, Mr. President, your budget included $116 million to restart the Yucca Mountain process. That means a lot more to Nevadans than more of your empty promises on Twitter. The only promise worth making to the people of Nevada is one that ensures absolutely no dumping of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Under a Biden Administration there would be absolutely zero dumping of nuclear waste in Nevada.”

Since Trump called it quits on Yucca, the federal government has pursued an initiative to license a pilot consolidated interim storage site, perhaps operated by a private company. Congress has been in the driver’s seat for that effort, which neither mandates a location for the temporary repositories, nor changes existing law designating Yucca as the site of a future permanent disposal site.

Holtec International and Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Orano USA and Waste Control Specialists, are each applying for licenses to operate interim storage facilities.

Meanwhile, Biden’s energy team will be led by Dr. Arun Majumdar, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford. Majumdar, the first director of DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy in the Obama administration, outlined the urgent nature of the country’s nuclear waste problem in a Senate nomination hearing in 2011. 

“This is a really serious issue because if we cannot handle the nuclear waste, we have a real problem in the nation in the long term,” Majumdar said in response to questions concerning how to store spent fuel from small modular reactors. 

Other members of the team include a number of Obama-era DOE staffers, including: Rod O’Connor, DOE chief of staff from 2009 to 2011; John J. MacWilliams, DOE associate deputy secretary between 2013 and 2017; Jonathan Elkind, who departed the DOE in 2017 as assistant secretary for international affairs; Madelyn Creedon, principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at DOE from 2014 to 2017; Rhonda Carter, who served as a DOE deputy White House liaison for a year before becoming White House liaison from 2013 to 2015; and Rachel Slaybaugh, associate professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California – Berkeley.

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NEW: Via public records request, I’ve been able to confirm reporting today that a warrant has been issued for DOE deputy asst. secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition Sam Brinton for another luggage theft, this time at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid airport. (cc: @EMPublications)

DOE spent fuel lead Brinton accused of second luggage theft.



by @BenjaminSWeiss, confirming today's reports with warrant from Las Vegas Metro PD.

Waste has been Emplaced! 🚮

We have finally begun emplacing defense-related transuranic (TRU) waste in Panel 8 of #WIPP.

Read more about the waste emplacement here: https://wipp.energy.gov/wipp_news_20221123-2.asp

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