The Department of Energy will seek neither to license a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, nor a federal facility for temporary centralized storage of the radioactive material, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said Thursday.
His comments come after Brouillette’s predecessor, Rick Perry, said last fall the agency also has no legal authorization to contract with a commercial operation to take the waste on an interim basis until permanent disposal is available.
This appears to leave the Energy Department largely in a holding pattern – seeking a sliver of money to prepare for the day when it might be allowed by Congress to consolidate tens of thousands of tons of waste now dispersed around the United States.
Brouillette testified before the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee on the Energy Department’s $35.4 billion budget request for fiscal 2021. The proposal features $27.5 million for a new Interim Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight program within the Office of Nuclear Energy.
Pressed by panel Chairwoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) for specifics of this approach, Brouillette was more expansive on what the program will not involve than what it will.
“We’re not going to proceed with licensing of Yucca Mountain and we won’t proceed with licensing of an interim federal facility. We can’t. In my understanding of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act we’re prohibited from starting construction of an interim facility, a federal facility, so we will not pursue that,” he said.
Within the request, DOE would use $20 million for operations to lay the groundwork for consolidated interim storage.
The request “is dedicated to performing the scoping, planning, and development activities needed to implement an interim storage program enabling near-term consolidation and storage of nuclear waste,” the agency said Wednesday in the detailed budget justification for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
That would cover preparation of a program plan for a waste management system; taking steps to identify possible storage locations; preparing initial design concepts; cooperation with federal, state, local, and tribal entities; and other activities.
“There are provisions in current law that allow us to do research and development on perhaps interim storage options,” according to Brouillette, who became energy secretary in December after more than two years as Perry’s deputy at DOE. “We don’t need legislative authority to do that, it already exists in the current law under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.”
It is too early to discuss details of this program, which in any case has not yet been funded by Congress, Brouillette said. But he said DOE intends to work with lawmakers, as well as state and local stakeholders, to consider potential alternatives.
The remaining $7.5 million would be directed toward oversight of the Nuclear Waste Fund, the federal account that is intended to pay for a geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations and spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. That tranche would pay for “maintaining safety and security and other fiduciary responsibilities for the Yucca Mountain site and continued oversight of the Nuclear Waste Fund.”
Brouillette described that as the “guns, gates, and guards” needed to protect the federal property about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
While Brouillette indicated otherwise during the hearing, the DOE budget says the $27.5 million would be drawn from the Nuclear Waste Fund.
The emphasis on temporary storage rather than permanent disposal of U.S. nuclear waste is a significant turnaround for the Trump administration, which in the past three budget cycles asked Congress to appropriate money to resume licensing of the Yucca Mountain site. Each request died on Capitol Hill.
Those proposals were in line with current law – The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the Energy Department until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin disposal of high-level waste and spent fuel. The law was amended five years afterward to direct that the material be placed within a geologic repository under Yucca Mountain.
Today there is roughly 100,000 metric tons of federal and commercial nuclear waste still in storage across dozens of locations in about 40 states. Over four-fifths of that is spent fuel kept at the power plants where it was generated.
The Energy Department didn’t file its license application to build and operate the Nevada disposal facility with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission until 2008. Nevada’s leaders and congressional delegation have fought that program, saying their state should not have to accept other states’ waste.
President Barack Obama defunded the licensing proceeding in 2010, and that is where things stand now despite efforts in recent years from the White House and Congress to put money back in. Meanwhile, interim storage is seen as an avenue for DOE to finally meet its legal obligation to deal with the waste, at least for a while.
President Donald Trump signaled the administration’s new position in a Feb. 6 tweet: “Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you! Congress and previous Administrations have long failed to find lasting solutions – my Administration is committed to exploring innovative approaches – I’m confident we can get it done!”
Within hours, the White House had confirmed it would not make a fourth attempt to obtain money from Congress for licensing Yucca Mountain. That was formalized the following Monday in the new budget request.
Trump reaffirmed his position during a Feb. 21 rally in Las Vegas, one day ahead of the Nevada caucuses for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.
This did not sit will with Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), a subcommittee member whose congressional district covers the Energy Department’s Hanford Site. The former plutonium production complex is stuck with high-level waste that is supposed to be shipped to Nevada, he noted Thursday.
“I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to see this administration playing politics with something as important as completing the permanent solution to our nation’s high-level nuclear waste,” he told Brouillette, pledging to oppose the requested storage funding.
The federal government has already spent $15 billion on research and development of the Yucca Mountain repository, Newhouse said. He called the new interim-storage proposal a “total waste of resources and a distraction from solving this very important issue.”
Two corporate teams hope by 2021 to secure Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses to build facilities that could hold commercial used fuel for decades until a permanent repository is ready. Holtec International’s site in Lea County, N.M., would have a maximum capacity exceeding 100,000 metric tons of the waste, while Interim Storage Partners aims for storage of up to 40,000 metric tons just across the state border in Andrews County, Texas. Neither is intended to take high-level defense waste.
There was no mention of either project during the Thursday hearing.
The Energy Department budget “is careful not to reference any currently proposed candidate sites, which is politically prudent and doesn’t introduce any legal complications,” Edwin Lyman, director of the Nuclear Power Safety Program at the nongovernmental Union of Concerned Scientists, said by email Thursday. “By only ‘initiating processes to identify potential sites’ DOE can claim that it is developing objective criteria to guide later site selection.”
The $27.5 million represents “a fairly minimal effort” that would largely involve analyzing possible storage options and strategies, pending approval from Congress for such efforts, Lyman stated.
The primary legal barrier to interim storage is seemingly language in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that the secretary of energy can take title to high-level waste and used fuel once the repository is operational. In an October letter to Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), Perry referenced the law in saying DOE is “not authorized” to contract for private interim storage of spent fuel.
While Holtec and Interim Storage Partners have identified the Energy Department as their primary intended customer for spent-fuel storage, the companies have acknowledged they could end up doing business directly with nuclear utilities.
Legislation filed in the House and Senate last year would authorize the Energy Department to proceed with “monitored retrievable storage” for used nuclear fuel. Specifically, according to the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, the secretary of energy would be authorized to “site, construct, and operate one or more monitored retrievable storage facilities” and “store … Department-owned “civilian waste at a monitored retrievable storage facility for which a non-Federal entity holds a license.”
The bills are largely identical to 2017 legislation from Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) that was advanced out of the House but never got a Senate vote before time ran out with the end of the 115th Congress in January 2019.
The House version, led by Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), got an up vote in November from the House Energy and Commerce Committee and now waits on floor action. The Senate bill, from Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.), remains before the upper chamber’s Environment and Public Works Committee – which Barrasso chairs.
Brouillette will be back on Capitol Hill Tuesday to discuss the DOE budget before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Divvying the Appropriation
While the Energy Department is not saying much about how it would spend the money for its interim storage program, it knows where it would spend it.
The agency on Monday released its laboratory tables budget document for 2021, laying out funding requests for dozens of sites around the nation. The breakdown for requested Interim Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight spending is: $15 million for Washington headquarters, $10 million for the Idaho Operations Office, and $2.5 million for the Nevada Field Office.
In the table for each location, the same amount is listed for Interim Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight and Interim Storage Programs.
The Nevada Field Office is primarily comprised of the Nevada National Security Site, overseen by the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The site houses a facility for disposal of low-level and mixed-low-level radioactive wastes from approved Energy Department and Pentagon facilities. It is also near Yucca Mountain.
The Idaho Operations Office oversees cleanup and research operations at the Idaho National Laboratory, which include waste treatment and research involving spent nuclear fuel.
