Rep. Mike Levin, (D-Calif.) this week filed a five-year, $500m bill to form a spent nuclear fuel research and development program at the Department of Energy.
The California congressman has long petitioned to increase oversight of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is in his jurisdiction and in the process of being decommissioned after getting shut down in 2013. Since his election in 2018, he has introduced a number of bills and measures attempting to deal with the spent fuel at the plant, which he said poses health risks to his constituency.
“The Department of Energy must do more to develop new solutions to the challenges our nation faces with spent nuclear fuel,” he said in a statement. “This bill would bring us one step closer to getting the waste at San Onofre off of our beach, and that remains one of my top priorities.”
It’s unlikely the bill, the Spent Nuclear Fuel Solutions Research and Development Act, H.R. 8258, will pass this session — with an election looming, and a Supreme Court vacancy for the Senate to fill, Congress will have little time for lawmaking once it passes a continuing resolution to fund the government beyond Sept. 30.
Introduced Sep. 15, the bill would require the energy secretary to consider options like dry cask storage, consolidated interim storage, deep geological storage and disposal, vitrification and integrated waste management systems, among others. The measure would become null and void once the 117th Congress begins in early January, but the legislative text would remain polished and ready for refiling in the next session.
The bill outlines a number of recommendations mentioned in his San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station Task Force report, published earlier this summer.
