Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
2/7/2014
House lawmakers are open to discussions on the possible creation of interim spent fuel storage sites, but Yucca Mountain needs to be involved in that process, House Environment and the Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said this week at an event hosted by POLITICO. Shimkus, along with most of House Republicans, has long been a vocal supporter of Yucca Mountain as the site for a geological storage facility for the nation’s high level waste. “Interim storage is not off the table for us, but there has to be an acceptance that there are 30 years and a $50 billion investment in Yucca Mountain,” Shimkus said. “Granted that the SER report from the NRC comes out and says it’s safe for one million years, we would then be able to the debate on interim storage at Yucca Mountain or someplace else, but Yucca always has to be a part of that debate,” he said. The Senate, for its part, currently has a bill, the “Nuclear Waste Administration Act,” in committee that would implement much of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future’s recommendations, including consent-based interim storage, but delays to the markup of the bill make its future unclear at this point.
Should States Have More Control In Repository Process?
Also this week, officials on a panel held at the Platts 10th Annual Nuclear Energy Conference considered alternate methods of siting a repository that would include greater say from states into how that process would work. Charles Forsberg, a research scientist and executive director of the nuclear fuel cycle project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggested that states should have more say in how a potential repository should look and operate. “How we define a repository defines the required institutional structure and likely success,” Forsberg said. “The key question is: what is a repository? Is it a single purpose facility, or is it the center of an industrial recruitment strategy?”
States’ main concerns have to do with jobs and revenue, so any potential host state, Forsberg said, should be able to leverage as much from a repository for those ends. Forsberg likened what a potential repository industrial center could to do for a state to similar industrial hubs in Silicon Valley and Tennessee. “States should be senior partners in the process,” Forsberg said. “Not told what to do.” Forsberg imagined that commercial companies that produce large quantities of waste would want to locate close to a repository to decrease transportation costs, and states should be able to create hospitable environments for these companies without federal intervention.
This strategy received support from another member of the panel, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Nuclear Waste Committee Chairman Greg White, who said he “wished that was the model we adopted 20-30 years ago.” White cautioned, though, that Yucca Mountain should not be so easily discarded. “I am reluctant to throw out the last thirty years and start over fresh,” White said. He went on to say that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires the federal government to use Yucca Mountain, and the law should be followed.
Regardless of the strategy to site a repository, both White and Forsberg said nothing could move forward because there is no place within the federal government for the interested states to express their interest. “There is no one in the federal government to talk to,” Forsberg said. “There needs to be an office to negotiate with.” White suggested that any future plan should be “insulated from politics” to avoid this problem in the future.
