Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
9/4/2015
Names of personnel responsible for the Department of Energy’s consent-based siting initiative for a consolidated interim storage facility of spent nuclear fuel emerged this week, almost six months after Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz announced DOE would take a more active role in finding a host community. Andrew Griffith, associate deputy assistant energy secretary of fuel technologies, has led the department’s efforts for consent-based siting over both the federal and contractor workforce under a project entitled “Nuclear Fuel Storage and Transportation Project.” Melissa Bates from the Office of Nuclear Energy is leading the federal side of the project, RadWaste Monitor has learned, and Mark Nutt from Argonne National Laboratory is leading the national laboratory effort. Under their leadership, Mike Reim from the Office of Nuclear Energy and Rob Howard from Oak Ridge National Laboratory are responsible for the consent-based portion of the project on the federal side and on the national laboratory side, respectively.
While personnel have been in place since Moniz’s March announcement, DOE has not made any official announcements about its consent-based siting workforce. “Mike is one of several members of federal employees and contractors that comprise a team of people working on consent based siting in the office of nuclear energy,” a DOE spokesperson said by email yesterday. “The team is actively developing plans and performing technical analysis of various components of an integrated waste management system, as well as evaluating the Department’s next steps in the consent-based siting process. These activities are consistent with the Department’s laying the groundwork for implementing interim storage and transportation for commercial used nuclear fuel consistent with the Administration’s Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste.”
A consent-based pilot consolidated storage facility is the Department of Energy’s preferred strategy to satisfy the nation’s spent fuel disposal needs— approximately 75,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. However, language in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act prevents the department from considering other sites beyond Yucca Mountain in Nevada without congressional approval. Moniz, though, announced in March that DOE would begin to take “affirmative steps” to siting a consent-based pilot interim storage facility. DOE has been working on generic analyses of how to move forward with an interim storage facility, but now will take a much more proactive approach in talking with actual communities about hosting a site, Moniz said. Construction of a facility, though, cannot occur without congressional approval.
The emergence of the name has inspired hope in many stakeholders that DOE has finally taken an active role in moving forward with the project. “As reported, I appreciate the DOE finally appearing to do something, rather than nothing,” said Lake Barrett, a former DOE official. “They claimed there was something better, but never advanced anything. Hopefully this is something meaningful and not another red herring distraction attempting to portray some phony progress. The nation needs solutions for nuclear waste, not empty gestures.”
