A project to design a federally owned and operated interim storage facility for radioactive waste reached the milestone that marks the start of conceptual design work, the Department of Energy said Wednesday.
The Federal Consolidated Interim Storage Facility project “recently” reached the critical decision-0, or CD-0, milestone, DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy wrote Wednesday in a press release.
CD-0 is the point in DOE project management where the agency officially decides that a given project is the only way to fulfill a legal mandate.
“This milestone is more than just a procedural step; it is the first step in our strategic vision to meet our contractual commitments and advance the nation’s nuclear energy infrastructure,” said Paul Murray, deputy assistant secretary for Spent Fuel and High-Level Waste Disposition, in DOE’s press release.
To accompany the presser, DOE released a new video, titled “What if we consolidated our spent nuclear fuel?” about its planned interim storage site.
According to the video, the eventual interim storage site will be able to hold roughly 15 metric tons of spent fuel. That is about 16% of the total inventory of spent nuclear fuel now stored near the power plants that burned it, according to DOE figures.
DOE legally cannot build or operate an interim storage site before it opens a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. Congress would have to change the law to allow an interim site to open first.
A DOE spokesperson did not immediately reply to questions about when the project reached CD-0 and when it might reach CD-1, the point in DOE project management where the agency roughs out a cost and schedule estimate that gets firmed up at the subsequent CD-2 milestone.
