The Energy Department may reclassify its West Valley Demonstration Project as a defense nuclear site, upping the federal funding for which the former spent fuel reprocessing facility is eligible, a local New York newspaper reported last week.
Former Energy Sec. Ernest Moniz notified Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) of the possibility Thursday, the Olean Times Herald reported.
“The Department of Energy’s decision to reexamine the West Valley site kicks the door wide open to achieve reclassification, from commercial to defense site, which can deliver more federal resources that the community and state desperately needs to clean up this toxic site,” Schumer said in a statement to the Times Herald.
West Valley was the only U.S. site ever to reprocess spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. Nuclear Fuel Services provided reprocessing from 1966 to 1972, ceasing after a regulatory clampdown prompted the U.S. power industry to make an abrupt turn away from spent fuel reprocessing.
Congress declared West Valley a cleanup site in 1980, but it took more than a decade before the site’s vitrification plant began turning liquid nuclear waste into radioactive glass. Vitrification ran from 1996 and 2002.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management awarded CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley a West Valley Demonstration Project Interim End State Contract in 2011. The pact runs through at least March 9, 2020, and is worth roughly $525 million.
In late October, CH2M marked a big milestone when it shipped tons of old vitrification equipment over road and rail for disposal at Waste Control Specialists’ commercially operated repository near Andrews, Texas.
Any West Valley reclassification decision will ultimately be made by the administration of newly inaugurated President Donald Trump, who may not go along with the old administration’s plans to reclassify West Valley.
Editor’s Notes 01/30/2017, 11:39 Eastern time: The story was updated with the correct name of DOE’s prime contractor at the West Valley site.
An earlier version of this article described Nuclear Fuel Services Inc., the former spent nuclear fuel reprocessor at what is now the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York state, as defunct. The business continues to operate as a BWX Technologies subsidiary that produces nuclear fuel for the U.S. Navy.
