Brian Bradley
RW Monitor
9/11/2015
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday revealed it is evenly split on whether it would support doubling proposed funding for the Yucca Mountain licensing review from the $25 million amount outlined in the House 2016 Energy and Water Appropriations Act to a $50 million request for fiscal year 2017. During a joint hearing on Wednesday of the House Energy & Commerce subcommittees on Environment and the Economy, and Energy and Power, Commissioners Kristine Svinicki and William Ostendorff said they would cast votes in favor of the greater amount; Commissioner Jeff Baran said he would oppose the increase; and Chairman Stephen Burns said he would vote against it unless the Energy Department indicates its support.
Expressing his opposition, Baran said overfunding the licensing review could ignite a long, antagonistic, “trial-like” process to bring the license through a lengthy adjudication process which could include an applicant having to address close to 300 current outstanding contentions. He said problems can arise when applicants do not put in effort to defend their applications. He added: “The reason I haven’t supported asking for that money is that you have to have an applicant that’s committed to their application….Ultimately they have the burden of demonstrating that their application is going to be safe. I just don’t see how that process works. So you’d have to have an engaged applicant. DOE would need money to do that. We would need money to do that. There are a lot of things that you would need to make the process work.”
The NRC has estimated that the entire licensing process could cost $300 to $330 million, which Burns said could take three to four years for the NRC to complete, including the adjudicatory proceedings. Despite the looming uncertainty surrounding the timeline of the licensing process, Environment and Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) called for the NRC to request a budget on par with those amounts in its fiscal 2017 budget request, “so then we would get it authorized, and then we would get it appropriated,” he said.
Shimkus also praised the NRC for completing its draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) on potential groundwater impacts for Yucca Mountain, and said it substantiates the site’s ability to serve as a permanent repository for spent fuel. “The draft SEIS again verifies the repository can safely operate for one million years and affirms the site is the best solution to permanently dispose of spent nuclear fuel,” Shimkus said in a statement. “The Federal Government’s inability to fulfill its legal obligations established by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act continues to increase every year Yucca Mountain is delayed. The NRC and Department of Energy must resume consideration of the Yucca Mountain license application and reach a final decision whether the site, as science has indicated, can safely store spent nuclear fuel.”
NRC to Look at Requesting ’17 Interim Storage Funding
Burns also said that the NRC would look at requesting fiscal 2017 funding for reviewing consolidated interim storage applications. “It is not in the [fiscal 2016] budget that was submitted, because basically, when we got the letters for intent, that was after the budget was in process,” he said. “What we would do is, we would look at our resources and reprioritize to the extent it would begin in ’17.”
Svinicki and Ostendorff said they would be open to interim storage proposals, yet Ostendorff presented a caveat for consideration, saying that current locations are storing spent fuel safety and security right now. The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future has recommended consolidated interim storage as part of the solution to the nation’s high-level waste issues. Baran said the method could reduce federal government liabilities, and would obviously provide a destination for spent fuel stocks currently scattered among the nation’s reactor sites.
Baran emphasized that a path forward for interim storage is ultimately a policy question for Congress. “As a citizen, I could say that interim storage could allow some decommissioned reactor sites to close completely,” he said. “It would create a place for the spent fuel that’s being kept on site to go, and it could reduce the federal government’s liability for failure to take title to the waste.”
