The Department of Energy said Tuesday it has canceled a planned test of the use of deep boreholes for storage of U.S. nuclear waste.
“Due to changes in budget priorities regarding nuclear waste policy, the Department of Energy does not intend to continue supporting the Deep Borehole Field Test (DBFT) project,” DOE spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said by email, just hours after the department released a budget proposal that zeroes out funding for all used nuclear fuel disposition research and development.
Instead, pending approval from Capitol Hill, the department intends to spend $120 million starting Oct. 1 on planning for consolidated interim storage of nuclear waste and reviving the license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada. This funding stream will include planning for interim storage and transportation, DOE said.
All of these efforts have been intended to help DOE meet its 1982 congressional mandate to find a permanent storage site for what is now more than 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power reactors.
The department in fiscal 2016 budgeted $62.5 million for a long list of used nuclear fuel disposition R&D activities under the Office of Nuclear Energy. That included preparing field testing to assess the potential for using 16,000-foot boreholes in crystalline rock formations for DOE-managed spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste.
DOE never got past the site location phase for the borehole project. The agency and Battelle Memorial Institute canceled the first contract in July 2016 in the face of deep opposition from residents in two proposed test sites in Pierce County, N.D., and Spink County, S.D. As of this month, DOE was still reviewing proposals from four teams for four borehole sites in a second round of bidding.
The DOE budget proposal would also zero out the department’s Integrated Waste Management System, which received $22.5 million in fiscal 2016.
