The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sufficient funds in its current budget and proposed spending plan for the next fiscal year to review license applications for two interim spent nuclear fuel storage sites proposed for New Mexico and Texas, NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki told a U.S. Senate subcommittee Wednesday.
“We have sufficient resources for two spent nuclear fuel applications,” she said.
The three NRC commissioners testified on their $970.7 million budget request for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee.
While he acknowledged the planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada must be part of the answer to the decades-old impasse on nuclear waste disposal, subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) – as he has before – zeroed in on interim storage as a potentially faster means for addressing the matter.
In February, the NRC docketed for full review an application from Holtec International for a Lea County, N.M., facility that eventually could hold up to 120,000 metric tons of spent fuel. Svinicki said the NRC is still waiting for formal notification from Waste Control Specialists and Orano on their announced plan to revive an application for a facility in Andrews County, Texas. Waste Control Specialists applied in April 2016 for a facility with a 40,000-metric-ton capacity, but a year later asked that the review be suspended.
Both NRC technical reviews would take about three years, Svinicki said, but the clock is stopped on the anticipated WCS-Orano application.
Alexander tried to pin down Svinicki on how long it would take to build the storage facilities. She did not provide any specific timelines other than saying “it doesn’t take years and years to do that.” The NRC chair speculated that parts of the facilities could be phased into operation while other parts are still under construction.
The NRC budget proposal includes $47.7 million to resume Yucca Mountain licensing activities. The current budget provides exactly nothing for this work, and it remains to be seen whether a skeptical Senate will hand over the money.
