PHOENIX — The nuclear industry has done its fair share to convince the public that private spent-fuel depots are safe, and the federal governments must now step up to the plate, the head of Westinghouse’s environmental services division said Monday.
“If [the government] wants to stand behind a commercial site, they would have to take the lead in working with the state to convince the states and legislators that this is for the benefit of their state and the overall industry,” Sam Shakir told Exchange Monitor Monday during an interview at the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix.
Shakir, who joined Westinghouse in April 2021 after serving as CEO of Orano USA, said that nuclear industry and commercial players have “done a lot” to prove to the public that interim storage is safe.
“The industry has licensed interim storage facilities,” he said. “We have demonstrated the safety of dry storage at ISFSIs [independent spent fuel storage installations] around the country. The industry has taken the lead to solve what was an immediate problem: what to do with accumulating spent fuel.”
Industry needs to stand up and tell the public that spent fuel is not a problem, Shakir said — but that will only happen if it sees “enough momentum and support from the government.”
“The government has to step up and say, ‘okay, let’s take it to the next step and consolidate that fuel in interim storage, and let’s stand behind a repository because other countries around the world are doing it safely,” Shakir said.
Under the Joe Biden administration, the Department of Energy is taking another crack at a federal interim storage facility — or, at least, a crack at figuring out how potential host communities want the siting process to play out.
The agency in November unveiled a request for information (RFI) about siting an interim storage site, the comment period for which closed on March 4. Where a permanent repository is concerned, the White House has committed not to provide new funding for the moribund Yucca Mountain site in 2022.
Shakir said it’s “not clear” where the federal government stands on the spent fuel issue.
“We were funding Yucca Mountain, and then we stopped funding it,” he said. “Now we want consent-based [interim storage] and we’re not sure where that’s going to be or how long it will take.”
The industry doesn’t want that uncertainty, Shakir said.
“We want certainty, and that path is pretty clear,” said Shakir. The federal government should stand behind that, begin to promote it, and leave politics out. Unfortunately, this is all politics.”
Nevertheless, private companies are clearing regulatory hurdles required to build their own interim storage sites.
Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture between Waste Control Specialists and Orano, got the green light in September from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a proposed depot site in west Texas.
Another company, Holtec International, is awaiting NRC permission for its own project in southeastern New Mexico. Both proposed sites have faced heavy resistance from state and local authorities as well as on Capitol Hill.
