The Department of Energy plans to draw up a draft design for its consent-based process for nuclear waste storage by the end of 2016, acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy John Kotek said Wednesday.
The consent-based siting process is the Obama administration’s replacement for the canceled geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Kotek, who appeared at the DOE National Cleanup Workshop in Alexandria, Va., is leading public outreach for the process.
The consent-based siting draft, Kotek said, will include preliminary plans for a separate defense-only waste repository, which he believes “will help facilitate efforts to permanently dispose of the whole inventory of commercial fuel,” or about 74,000 metric tons of waste that is now stranded at nuclear reactor sites around the country. The siting process, as drawn up, envisions a pilot storage facility by 2021; one or more larger, interim facilities by 2025; and at least one permanent geologic repository by 2048.
“As we get out and working with states, local tribes, governments, and others on a consent-based siting process, we think ultimately putting out a plan that describes what we think the path forward for a defense repository would look like would help inform debates that are already going on within states within communities, within tribes, who might be interested in hosting a storage facility, repository, or both,” Kotek said.
DOE this year hosted a number of public meetings around the country to gather feedback on the consent-based siting process, and garnered more than 11,000 public comments. Kotek appeared Thursday at a public meeting in Washington, D.C., with Associate Deputy Assistant Energy Secretary for Fuel Cycle Technologies Andrew Griffith and acting Team Lead for DOE Nuclear Fuels Storage and Transportation Melissa Bates. The three answered questions from the public, while relaying what DOE believes were the most common themes included in the public comments and discussing next steps in the process.
Kotek addressed DOE’s intention to move forward with both interim storage and final repository sites on a parallel path. One concern from Republican House leadership has been that temporary storage will become permanent storage. Kotek said DOE recognizes that siting, characterizing, and licensing a repository site could take significantly longer than a consolidated storage facility.
“Personally I think that’s just going to be part of the negotiation with the community and the state and potentially tribe that might be interested in hosting consolidated storage, a recognition that there is the potential for delay in the development of a repository, and any sort of agreement is going to need to build in protections for that state, that tribe, that local government in the event that any material needs to stay on site longer than anyone hopes,” Kotek said Thursday.
The department anticipates awarding $25 million in grants to potential host communities, so they can independently study the prospect of hosting DOE facilities. How far the department takes its consent-based siting initiative in the new year will depend highly on what Congress decides this month for funding levels for fiscal 2017, which begins on Oct. 1. A brief stopgap funding measure to Dec. 9 appears to be in the cards; any additional continuing resolutions would further keep spending levels at fiscal 2016 levels. The department for the next budget year has requested $76.3 million for its Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS), including $39.4 million in new funding for consent-based siting. DOE’s fiscal 2016 enacted funding includes just $22.5 million for IWMS.
“I think there is definitely potential for a continuing resolution to impact where we’re trying to take (consent-based siting),” Bates said last week at the ExchangeMonitor’s RadWaste Summit in Las Vegas. “I think there are enough things that we might still be putting a good foot forward, but” the first step will be starting conversations with communities.
Kotek on Thursday said a common theme in DOE’s public comments was the suggestion to establish a new organization within the department for managing spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. That suggestion is consistent with the Obama administration’s strategy and recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.
“We think that’s the right way to move forward in the long-term, but we also need to begin the process now, so we’ve been trying to take steps to improve, to get started with a design for a process and do some other things to enable us to move forward and at some point in time wind up with a new organization to manage the waste program,” Kotek said.
Kotek said plans to establish an office for IWMS within the Office of Nuclear Energy, with Griffith transitioning to a position that reports directly to Kotek’s assistant secretary position. Griffith currently reports to a deputy assistant secretary that works under Kotek. The shift essentially formalizes the role Griffith has been serving for the past year, Kotek said, helping to streamline waste management functions.
“Ultimately we think the right thing to do is for this organization to become standalone, and like I said, we’re trying to do those things right now so that we can get ready for that day,” Kotek said.