The Michigan Senate Energy and Technology Committee last week advanced three resolutions calling on the federal government to take action to address the naitonal dilemma posed by high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
“Safe and reliable nuclear energy provides much or our nation’s power and can continue to help us meet our current and future energy demands and create good jobs,” state Sen. John Proos (R), primary sponsor of two of the resolutions, said in a press release Monday. “Storage of spent fuel remains a problem due to inaction by the Department of Energy. The good news is that new technology exists that could put this waste back to productive use and help us substantially reduce the amount of spent nuclear fuel needed to be stored.”
Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 9 urges the president and U.S. Congress “to explore and support policies that will lead to the establishment of facilities within the United States for the reprocessing and recycling of spent nuclear fuel.”
Michigan and other states that are home to nuclear power plants have waited for decades for the Energy Department to fulfill its legal mandate to build a storage facility for what is now more than 70,000 metric tons of used reactor fuel. The Obama administration in 2010 canceled the Yucca Mountain commercial-defense waste repository in Nevada, though momentum appears to be growing to revive the project under President Donald Trump.
Proos was also the lead sponsor for Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 6, which calls on Congress to direct money from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund for building a permanent high-level waste repository or reimburse electric utility customers Electric utilities in Michigan have paid $812 into the fund since 1983, according to the resolution.
Finally, Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 8, led by state Sen. Dale Zorn (R), urges that DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “fulfill their obligation, as provided by law, to establish a permanent solution for handling high-level nuclear waste.”