Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/22/2014
Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley sent a letter this week to President Barrack Obama, Mississippi’s Congressional Delegation, and members of the Department of Energy highlighting the PSC’s opposition to hosting a high-level nuclear waste disposal facility in the site. Earlier this year, the PSC passed a unanimous resolution stating its opposition to hosting the nation’s nuclear waste. “I think it is very important for everyone from The White House to our Congressional Delegation and the bureaucrats in the Energy Department to know that this agency stands unified against any efforts to make Mississippi America’s nuclear waste dump,” Presley said in a statement. “It is obvious from the statements of Secretary Moniz and Mr. Lyons that there is an effort afoot to at least consider our state for the siting. I want them to know where our agency stands. I find it strange that the Department of Energy continues to push this idea of Mississippi as an alternative site for Yucca Mountain, Nevada. They need to know that the Public Service Commission is against that harebrained scheme.”
Presley included the resolution with his letter to show the Commission’s opposition, “in the hope that they will present you with an accurate account of Mississippi nuclear waste storage policy and correct any impression you may have been given that Mississippi would welcome the nation’s waste,” Pressley wrote in his letter
Mississippi’s PSC originally passed the resolution after comments made by Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy Pete Lyon concerning Mississippi’s perceived willingness to participate in hosting the waste. Moniz, when asked before a House Energy and Commerce hearing last year about communities interested in potentially participating in an interim storage program, mentioned Mississippi’s interest as reported by media outlets. He did however claim that any talk of a location would be premature before the program gains Congressional approval.The Department of Energy this week maintained that any movement on a nuclear waste facility would go through a consent-based process. “The Department remains committed to working with Congress to develop a consent-based process for the storage of used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, and will work to ensure that the process for pursing storage is transparent, adaptive, and technically sound,” a DOE spokesperson said.
Mississippi has been considering whether or not it wants to host a potential interim storage facility, as laid out in DOE’s nuclear waste strategy. Representatives from the Mississippi Energy Institute last year made a pitch to the state Senate’s Senate Economic Development Committee on the potential benefits of locating an interim spent nuclear fuel storage site. In a white paper presented to the committee, the MEI highlighted the state’s “unique” geological salt domes as a possible safe location for storage. “The demonstrated failure of the Federal government over three decades requires a thorough re-assessment of our approach to used nuclear fuel management, and provides an opportunity for the State of Mississippi to structure a consent-based host agreement that delivers significant economic development, employment, and energy security benefits,” the white paper said.
