The deadline for comment on a proposed deep-geological repository for defense-only high-level radioactive waste wraps up today, only days after the Trump administration announced that it wants to restart the licensing process for the combined civil-military Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada.
The Obama administration wanted to start searching for a Defense Waste Repository site this year as part of its consent-based siting program for nuclear waste. In a draft plan released last year, the Obama DOE estimated it would cost roughly $3 billion over 11 years to locate a suitable site for the facility that would accept only nuclear waste generated by the Cold War arms race.
Yucca, which Nevada’s governor and most lawmakers stridently oppose, would ostensibly render a defense-only repository redundant.
Yucca has support from Republicans in Congress — which last year would not even approve the $15 million the Obama administration wanted to start looking for a defense-only site — and Energy Secretary Rick Perry has talked about his desire to stop the U.S. from “kicking the can” on long-term nuclear waste storage.
In a report released in January, the Government Accountability Office said DOE might have lowballed the cost of a defense-only repository by several billion dollars and should “revise — if needed — the report’s conclusion that a strong basis exists to find that a defense HLW [high-level waste] repository is required.”
The budget outline the Trump administration released last week did not mention the Defense Waste Repository. If the facility is absent from the full budget request expected in May, it would be the surest sign yet the White House is not interested in a defense-only facility even as a backup to Yucca — which is in for a long stretch of legal opposition from Nevada.
