Interim Storage Set for Senate Approps Bill, Chair Says

Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said funding for a pilot interim storage facility would be included in the Senate’s version of the Fiscal Year 2016 Energy and Water appropriations bill, during remarks made yesterday at a Nuclear Regulatory Commission budget hearing. Both he and subcommittee Ranking Member Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) voiced support for a pilot storage interim facility to get spent nuclear fuel away from commercial reactors. Alexander also said he planned to reintroduce later this year legislation that would better define the nation’s spent nuclear fuel policy. “Later this year, I will reintroduce bipartisan legislation with Senators Feinstein, Murkowski and perhaps others, to create both temporary and permanent storage sites for nuclear waste,” Alexander said in his opening remarks. “Also, Senator Feinstein and I plan to include a pilot program for nuclear waste storage in the Energy and Water appropriations bill, as we have for the past three years.”

Alexander, though, maintained Yucca Mountain would be included in any new nuclear waste policy. “But let me be clear: Yucca Mountain can and should be part of the solution. Federal law designates Yucca Mountain as the nation’s repository for used nuclear fuel,” he said. Alexander also pressed the NRC on why it did not include additional funding to finish the Yucca Mountain licensing review in its FY 2016 budget request. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a balance of unspent funding that you are supposed to use to continue the licensing process. But more resources will be required, so I think it’s fair to ask the question: Knowing that there are additional steps and they will cost money, why would you not request additional funds in your budget?” he said.

NRC Chair Steven Burns said it would cost an estimated $330 million to finish the licensing review, but when asked after the hearing why the NRC had not requested additional funding, Burns said the lack of a willing applicant motivated the Commission to exclude additional funding in its request. “What we don’t have, and we’ve come to a point where we’ve done the steps needed to do before initiating the adjudication, or continuing the adjudication, where you have these 280 contentions that need to be heard and resolved by the licensing board, but we don’t have an applicant because we don’t have the Department of Energy,” Burns told reporters after the hearing.