SUMMERLIN, NEV — When it comes to getting spent nuclear fuel away from former power plant sites, the industry is “doing the wrong thing” to pressure the federal government to take action, a utility executive said here this week.
“[W]e really need to engage our governors and host communities more effectively to urge the federal government to remove the spent nuclear fuel from our sites,” Eric Howes, director of government and public affairs at Yankee Atomic Power Company said during a Tuesday session at the annual Decommissioning Strategy Forum, organized by Exchange Monitor. The industry advocating for itself “has not worked,” Howes said.
“Members of Congress are not hearing from the public about this. It’s not really on anybody’s radar screen,” Howes said.
Yankee, which owns three former reactor sites in New England and the spent fuel stranded there, has “been in discussions” with decommissioning plant coalitions like Action for Spent Fuel Solutions Now — an advocacy group organized by San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) owner Southern California Edison — to “talk about the strategy for raising the profile of this issue,” Howes said.
The advocacy group, formed in March, is aimed at pressuring the federal government to step up its spent fuel storage game.
Howes also pointed out the disparity in federal funding between host community assistance and actual spent fuel management. He compared around $100 million of federal assistance proposed for communities hosting decommissioned nuclear plants as part of a bipartisan bill reintroduced in April to the roughly $20 million proposed for a federal interim storage siting inquiry in two Congressional appropriations bills that passed their respective spending panels over the summer.
“There appears to be a greater emphasis in Congress on assistance to nuclear closure communities than there is to removing the spent nuclear fuel from the sites,” Howes said. “Until Congress appropriates sufficient and adequate funding for this program, nothing’s going to happen.”
So far, a federally-run interim or permanent repository for the tons of spent fuel stranded at reactor sites across the country has yet to materialize. Although the Joe Biden administration plans to continue the funding drought for the moribund Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, the Department of Energy has said that it would soon start looking for volunteers to host a potential federal interim storage facility. A federal appropriations bill that passed in both the House and Senate spending committees includes around $20 million for that inquiry.
