Before leaving the Department of Energy on May 3, Kathryn Huff briefly spotlighted the Joe Biden administration’s consent-based siting program for spent nuclear fuel in a recorded interview produced by the agency.
“It’s what we owe to communities, it’s what we’ve promised the utilities, and trust that the U.S. government is moving forward rather than stagnating with regard to this policy is essential to the build-out of new nuclear,” Huff said in the 15-minute video interview, according to a transcript DOE posted online.
Huff resigned as assistant secretary for nuclear energy on Friday to return to academia in Illinois. She left the post after almost three years at the Department of Energy, about two of which she spent as the head of the Office of Nuclear Energy. Huff announced her departure to office hands in April.
Mike Goff was to take over as acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy.
The consent-based siting program involves securing permission from any government, state, local or tribal, to build a storage site for high-level radioactive waste. Federal law forbids DOE from building an interim storage site before building a permanent repository.
With the only congressionally authorized site for a permanent repository, Yucca Mountain, going nowhere, DOE has focused on siting a federal interim storage site, even though it cannot legally build one.
The consent-based siting program as constituted involves 13 groups of grantees who have split $26 million to help DOE define what it means to consent to the storage of high-level radioactive waste. This program is still in the nascent stages, according to a progress report about the consortia the agency posted online in March.
Meanwhile, DOE has tried to make progress on waste storage within the bounds of the law. The agency is working on specialized railroad cars to transport spent nuclear fuel and planned a nation-wide tour of the cars, once they are ready.
The agency is also close to beginning design work on the federal interim storage facility, a senior official said in March.
