WATERFORD, CT — Congress probably will not allow the Department of Energy to build an interim storage site for nuclear waste any time soon, one of Capitol Hill’s foremost advocates for spent fuel solutions said this week.
Federal law passed as part of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act says the Department of Energy has to build a permanent storage facility before building an interim storage facility, and changing that law is too heavy a lift, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) said during a roundtable discussion with Department of Energy officials held Tuesday.
“Have we reached a point where we can do a substantial amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act? With my pundit hat on, I’d say at this point that’s still too big a hill to climb,” Courtney told RadWaste Monitor following Tuesday’s roundtable.
The Department of Energy must “show that there’s real progress being made” in handling nuclear waste volumes and safely transporting spent to spark action in Congress, Courtney said. “I think that’s going to create its own virtuous dynamic.”
The 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Act is one of DOE’s largest obstacles in its latest attempt to site a federal interim storage facility. As written, the law does not allow the agency to build such a site until a permanent nuclear waste repository is active.
During his tenure in Congress, Courtney has repeatedly sponsored the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act: legislation that among other things would have authorized DOE to establish facilities known as monitored retrievable storage sites to hold spent nuclear fuel until a permanent repository is established. The bill’s most recent iteration, introduced in 2019, never saw a vote in the House.
While a pair of private companies are planning interim storage sites near the border of Texas and New Mexico, DOE is trying to make as much progress toward siting a federal site as the law allows.
The main thrust of the current federal effort involves building a “consent-based siting consortia” comprising “multiple geographically and institutionally diverse” communities. Right now, DOE plans to spread $16 million in funding among six to eight awardees over roughly two years, according to a funding opportunity announcement issued in September. The deadline to apply is Jan. 31.
The only site designated as a permanent repository under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act — Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — has been little more than an abandoned construction site since 2010, when the Barack Obama administration pulled the project’s funding.
