The next phase of the Department of Energy’s spent fuel storage inquiry should begin next year, the head of the agency’s nuclear energy office told congressional investigators this month.
DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE) is “resuming consent-based siting activities,” acting ONE assistant secretary Kathryn Huff told the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a Sep. 10 letter appended to a Thursday GAO report. The office will update its draft consent-based siting procedures in “early 2022,” Huff said, and will put out a public comment request on the guidance later this year.
Consent-based siting, a term popularized by the Obama-era Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, has become the central theme in the Joe Biden administration’s efforts to develop a federal interim storage site for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel. Congressional appropriations bills that passed the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee include around $20 million for ONE’s consent-based siting program.
While the feds deliberate, private companies are forging ahead on spent fuel storage. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Sep. 14 licensed an interim storage site proposed by Interim Storage Partners (ISP): a joint venture of Orano US and Waste Control Specialists. The site would be built at Waste Control Specialists’ existing facility in west Texas.
Another company, New Jersey-based Holtec International, has its own interim storage application with NRC. The agency has said it expects to make a final licensing decision on that site, to be built in southeastern New Mexico, in January.
