The Department of Energy this week officially canceled its oft-foiled plan to test deep boreholes for storage of nuclear waste, as the Trump administration further formalized its intention to put that waste in Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
“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 told RadWaste Monitor. “In order to best address the Nation’s nuclear waste needs going forward, the Administration has requested $120 million in recently released FY18 budget proposal to advance the nation’s nuclear waste management program, and the Department hopes to pursue that process as expeditiously as possible.”
The four teams still bidding on the borehole project received written confirmation Tuesday of the cancellation, just as DOE released its fiscal 2018 budget proposal that zeroed out funding for the field test and all other DOE used nuclear fuel disposition research and development. That was followed by a conference call with Andrew Griffith, DOE’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition.
“We understand and we support DOE’s decision,” Wendy Lambert, a spokeswoman for borehole bidder Enercon Federal Services, said in a telephone interview. “I understand DOE’s challenge … in trying to figure out the right thing to do with taxpayers’ money.”
The Department of Energy received congressional direction in 1982 to build a permanent resting place for the U.S. stockpile of spent reactor fuel and high-level waste; lawmakers five years later ordered that the repository be built under Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
President Barack Obama halted the project early in his presidency, then formed a panel of experts to study alternatives for disposition of what is now tens of thousands of tons of waste. In its January 2012 report, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future cited deep boreholes as an option that needed further study.
The Department of Energy set out to do just that, announcing in January 2016 that it had selected Battelle Memorial Institute to drill a test borehole more than 16,000 feet deep into crystalline rock in Pierce County, N.D. However, the $35 million contract was canceled in July of that year when DOE and Battelle were unable to overcome vocal opposition to plan from local residents in both Pierce County and a backup test site in Spink County, S.D.
A second contract selection process, begun in August 2016, had as of this month been winnowed to four bidders studying four locations: TerranearPMC in Otero County, N.M.; Enercon and DOSECC Exploration Services in Quay County, N.M.; RESPEC in Haakon County, S.D.; and AECOM in Pecos County, Texas.
Several of the companies were struggling with local concerns that undid the first contract: distrust of the federal government, and worry that this test would open the door to storage of nuclear waste in the community. The Department of Energy has consistently said the borehole test would not involve nuclear waste, and the selected site would not be used later to hold such material, but skepticism persisted – Just on May 15, a group called Northeast New Mexicans United Against Nuclear Waste, in a letter to DOE’s Griffith, pledged to “exhaust every legal and political means at our disposal” to prevent digging in Quay County.
Phase 1 of the bidder selection process was scheduled to end this month; instead of deciding which teams would advance into the second phase, DOE has directed them to within 30 days deliver plans for closing any remaining subcontracts and other work in order to shut down the project.
Hynes said the Department of Energy had spent $18 million to date on borehole test. Ending it now will save $20 million in the current budget year, along with $70 million to $80 million in savings in future years, she said.
Lambert could not immediately say how much Enercon spent on its early pursuit of the contract, which included developing public outreach plans and other documents and holding meetings in the Quay County area. DOE will cover its costs and those of the other bidders, which did not respond this week to requests for comment.
The Trump administration telegraphed its decision in the “skinny budget” released in March, which said DOE would request $120 million for DOE for Yucca licensing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and for planning consolidated interim storage facilities that would hold nuclear waste for a period of decades until the permanent repository opens. The split in the detailed DOE budget plan released Tuesday was $110 million for Yucca and $10 million for interim storage, covering a program office, legal support, and technical and scientific activities in support of the licensing process.
The new Yucca Mountain and Interim Storage Programs account comes at the expense of all DOE used nuclear fuel disposition research and development, which encompassed boreholes and received $62.5 million in fiscal 2016; along with elimination of the Integrated Waste Management System, DOE’s multipart, decades-long plan for building pilot, interim, and permanent repositories for spent fuel and high-level waste, which received $22.5 million in the last budget.
Interim storage and transportation planning at DOE, along with some personnel, are now being moved to the Yucca Mountain account. “Program Direction funding for the associated federal staff and support (at NE Headquarters, Office of General Counsel, and the Nevada Field Office) are also transferred to the new account (-$13.5M),” according to the DOE budget plan.
There is significant support on Capitol Hill for reviving Yucca Mountain, though Nevada’s congressional delegation has made it clear it will fight tooth-and-nail against the Trump plan. Fiscal 2018 begins on Oct. 1.
