Should the Obama Administration choose to enact the Department of Energy’s recommendation to de-commingle defense high-level nuclear waste and commercial nuclear waste into two repositories, DOE would not need congressional authorization to implement and site a location for defense waste, DOE’s Assistant Secretary of the Office of Nuclear Energy Peter Lyons said yesterday at a meeting of the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee. DOE, however, would need funding to implement the defense repository through congressional appropriations, Lyons said. “The DOE has the authority to do this, but they do not have funding to do it,” Lyons said. “It would have to be appropriated, but there is no additional requirement for authorization.” Because President Ronald Reagan made an executive decision in 1985 that allowed defense and commercial waste to be disposed of in a single repository, President Obama can un-do that order without congressional approval. Both types of material had been planned to be co-mingled together in the now shuttered Yucca Mountain geological waste repository, but by separating the two, the Department of Energy would not be limited by the parameters of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and have more flexibility in design and implementation.
During his remarks, Lyons emphasized that this was only a recommendation under consideration, not an active strategy. In October, DOE released its report on co-mingling, which recommended two disposal pathways for defense and commercial waste. In its conclusions, the report said that DOE-managed HLW and SNF should be disposed of first due to the fewer challenges they pose, resulting in a simpler repository design and licensing processes, while engendering confidence in its ability to dispose of waste and meet its environmental management goals. Lyons also said this week that the defense waste was much cooler and limited in comparison to commercial waste, making disposal more predictable. “In the document, we spent considerable time talking about what has changed since 1985,” Lyons said. “There is a lot that has changed. Between now and 1985, probably the biggest change is that the Cold War has stopped, so we are no longer producing weapons, and therefore, the amount of defense-level waste is not increasing and is precisely known as a finite number.”
