The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in April spent $939 of its remaining balance from the federal fund intended to pay for a federal repository for the nation’s nuclear waste.
The spending left the agency on April 30 with a $409,861 unspent, undedicated balance from the Nuclear Waste Fund, according to the latest report to Congress.
“While there are no significant actions to report for the month, the NRC provided limited program planning and support activities that that resulted in nominal expenditures,” NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki wrote in a May 29 letter attached to the report.
The money was used to pay litigation costs, an NRC spokesman said Wednesday.
The NRC is the adjudicator for the Department of Energy’s 2008 license application for the planned Yucca Mountain, Nev., facility for disposal of spent reactor fuel from nuclear power reactors and high-level radioactive waste from federal defense nuclear operations.
The Obama administration defunded licensing in 2010, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in August 2013 ordered the NRC to resume its proceeding. Since then, the agency has spent more than $13.1 million of the over $13.5 million it had on hand from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the time of the ruling. Of that, $8.4 million was used to complete a safety evaluation report for high-level waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, along with $1.6 million to prepare a supplement on the environmental impact statement for the project.
The NRC has requested $38.5 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund for the upcoming 2020 federal fiscal year to resume Yucca Mountain licensing. The House this week is considering a multi-agency appropriations bill that denies that funding in favor of nearly $50 million focused on consolidated interim storage of spent fuel.
