Separate bills introduced in the House of Representatives would put the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) branch on the job of helping resolve the long impasse over disposition of the nation’s radioactive waste.
Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) submitted his “ARPA-E Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2019” on July 23, followed a week later by the “ARPA-E Reauthorization Act of 2019” from Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas.).
The bills would amend the 2007 America Competes Act, which established ARPA-E to advance development of energy technologies that are not yet ready for commercial investment. That would include revising the 2007 legislation’s language on ARPA-E’s goals.
That addition would include an all-new goal for ARPA-E to “provide transformative solutions to improve the management, clean-up, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel,” according to Johnson’s measure. The wording in Lucas’ bill is nearly identical, except that it cites low-level and high-level radioactive waste along with spent nuclear fuel.
The reauthorization bills were both referred to the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, where Johnson is chair and Lucas the ranking member.
The Energy Department asked the panel to offer the authority to ARPA-E in the legislation, according to committee spokeswoman Heather Vaughan. It is looking to employ the office “strategically across the Department’s whole mission,” she said Thursday by email.
“By giving ARPA-E the authority to explore work in this area, they can take on a few targeted technology projects without a lot of risk, and without taking away from the budget to meet DOE‘s commitments using current technologies for waste management,” Vaughan wrote.
The United States today holds about 100,000 metric tons of spent nuclear power reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste, spread across dozens of commercial and government sites around the nation. The federal government has sought for decades to find a permanent disposal site for the waste, with minimal success.
Congress in 1982 put the Department of Energy in charge of disposal. However, the agency still has not secured a license to build and operate a repository at its selected location under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Obama administration defunded the proceeding in 2010 and the Trump administration has not yet persuaded Congress to appropriate any money to resume licensing.
Meanwhile, corporate teams are seeking federal licenses for temporary storage sites in Texas and New Mexico that could hold the spent fuel until a permanent repository is ready. Wyoming state legislators are also studying whether to enter that business, as are other private concerns.
ARPA-E this week did not respond to a query regarding the legislation.
The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to eliminate ARPA-E by defunding all operations, including in its budget proposal for the upcoming 2020 federal budget year. “This elimination facilitates opportunities to integrate the positive aspects of ARPA-E into DOE’s applied energy research programs,” the department said in March as it rolled out its spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.
Congress has made clear it does not accept the administration’s thinking.
Johnson’s bill, among a series of measures, would authorize steadily increased appropriations for ARPA-E from fiscal 2020 through fiscal 2024, from $428 million to $1 billion. The funding allowed by the Lucas bill would be significantly more modest, starting at $392.8 million and rising to $500 million.
