The United States must find an innovative solution to its growing inventory of radioactive waste even as it takes steps to strengthen its nuclear power sector, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Wednesday.
Whitehouse focused his comments and questions on the waste issue during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Chairman John Barrasso’s (R-Wyo.) draft American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020.
“So as we steer nuclear innovation forward, I want to make sure we make it a really important strategic priority to have that innovation focus on the potential, the Holy Grail, of dealing with that terrible burden of spent fuel and actually turning that burden into an asset,” Whitehouse said in his opening comments to the session.
While he did not use the term specifically, the lawmaker was referring to the potential for recycling used fuel for reuse in nuclear plants, his office confirmed.
There is now over 80,000 metric tons of used fuel in storage, mostly on-site at the facilities where it was generated. That stockpile grows by about 2,000 metric tons per year. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the Department of Energy until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin disposing of the waste, but the agency still does not have anywhere to put it.
Assistant Energy Secretary for Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal has regularly discussed reprocessing as a potential solution, noting that spent fuel retains 95% of its original energy.
The Barrasso draft bill focuses on nuclear power technologies and the global uranium market, in light of competition from China and Russia. But the bill does call for Energy Department funding for the first non-federal entity that develops a Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved advanced nuclear fuel that uses a higher percentage of fuel than existing materials or employs isotopes from used fuel or depleted uranium. The agency would also be required to provide Congress with annual reports on costs related to used-fuel management.
Nuclear waste storage “creates cost, creates hazard, creates danger,” Whitehouse said. “It is a liability in an economic sense to have nuclear waste stockpiled at our facilities. So there’s value to finding a way to solve that problem. The question that I have is, as we embark on nuclear innovation, how can we make sure that the innovators see that value of that.”
