New Mexico is planning to voice its displeasure with the Department of Energy over a proposed commercial interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in their state, a member of its Congressional delegation told the secretary of energy in a hearing Tuesday.
The Department of Energy isn’t meeting its responsibility to designate a permanent repository for spent fuel and New Mexico is concerned that the proposed Holtec International interim storage facility could become a de facto permanent solution, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told Jennifer Granholm Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The state’s Congressional delegation and other stakeholders will soon send a letter to DOE voicing their concerns, Heinrich said.
The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), which has been a vocal opponent of the proposed Holtec site, didn’t return a request for comment by deadline Wednesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. However, in a recent interview the agency’s secretary James Kenney said that Holtec and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were looking at “the wrong site” for an interim storage facility.
Meanwhile, Granholm, testifying before the Senate energy panel on her agency’s budget request for fiscal year 2022, told told Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) that an “inquiry” into federal interim storage solutions should kick off next month.
“You can’t force this [interim storage] on any community,” Granholm said. “There has to be a process of consent, and presumably a reward” for communities that elect to host an interim storage site, she said.
DOE requested $20 million for fiscal 2022 to explore a separate, federal interim storage facility.
Currently, the only two proposed sites for storing spent nuclear fuel would be operated by private companies. Holtec’s site in New Mexico and Interim Storage Partners’ in west Texas are both awaiting licensing decisions from NRC. Both potential host states have opposed the proposed waste-storage sites.
Granholm also said Tuesday that the Biden administration was also planning to roll out a “significant new investment” in nuclear energy this week but didn’t elaborate how large the investment would be or where the money would go.
In its fiscal 2022 budget request, DOE asked for $1.8 billion to fund its nuclear energy office, including the $20 million allowance for an interim storage program. The president’s budget also asks for $750 million to establish a credit program for existing nuclear power plants as part of the Biden-backed American Jobs Plan.
