There is no funding for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada in the omnibus appropriations bill Congress is expected to pass this week to keep the Energy Department and the rest of the federal government funded through September.
The Donald Trump administration wants to restart DOE’s application to license Yucca Mountain with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in fiscal 2018. The White House has proposed spending $120 million in the budget year that begins Oct. 1 on a combination of Yucca licensing activities and early work on interim storage sites for spent nuclear fuel generated by U.S. power plants.
The administration has not specified how it would divide and use that funding. A more detailed budget proposal is expected this month.
In March, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) asked the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee not to include funding for Yucca Mountain in any 2017 spending bills. Like all the members of Nevada’s U.S. delegation, Heller staunchly opposes Yucca Mountain.
Yucca is intended to hold tens of thousands of tons of U.S. commercial and defense waste. The Obama administration canceled the program, turning instead to “consent-based siting” for separate repositories for government and civilian waste. Trump, though, has reversed course.
The $31 billion DOE budget request does include $85 million for used nuclear fuel disposition, with $62.5 million directed toward “generic research and development activities,” according to the explanatory statement on departmental funding. At least “$14,250,000 shall be to continue research and development activities on behavior of spent fuel during storage, transportation, and disposai, with priority on preparation activities for testing high-burnup fuel and postirradiation examination of spent fuel rods and on the direct disposai of dry storage canister technologies,” according to the document.
The budget plan proposes $22.5 million for lntegrated Waste Management System operations, DOE’s multi-part plan for managing both spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Under the Obama administration that program over a period of decades was to pilot facilities, interim storage sites for spent fuel, and finally one or more geologic repositories.
