The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) has recommended Congress and the Department of Energy (DOE) formally start planning for a permanent geologic repository for nuclear waste.
The Technical Review Board said it is seeking a “workable pathway” to site, license, build and operate the facility for spent fuel and high-level waste, but is not recommending how to go about this.
NWTRB Chair Peter Swift outlined in the March 18 letter to Congressional leaders and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright that the board believes the United States needs one or more deep geologic repositories for permanent disposal.
In the letter and accompanying document, Swift stressed the importance of identifying a specific site. Until that happens, the discussions of a deep geologic repository are largely academic, the board letter said.
The board “concludes that the existing research and development program evaluating hypothetical disposal concepts without actions to identify one or more specific sites for consideration will not alone be sufficient to meet the national responsibility to develop a repository for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste,” NWTRB said
During his first term, President Barack Obama shut down plans to use Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a deep geologic repository site for high-level radioactive waste. President Joe Biden’s administration stressed what is called “consent-based siting” for both interim storage and permanent disposal of nuclear waste from reactors.
Based on the board’s research, the board said that as of December 2024, the DOE does not have an efficient repository program to address the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. In the attachment to the letter, the board stated that the DOE’s research was helpful but lacked substance since it did not identify any specific sites for a possible depository for permanent disposal.
The second conclusion the NWTRB came to in the letter was that a lack of an efficient repository program could bring a high-risk to its current efforts to site one or more federal interim storage sites. As stated in the letter, several government officials have shared their concerns about an interim storage facility.
In 2020, New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham sent a written letter to president Donald Trump expressing opposition to the proposed interim storage facility for nuclear waste.
“Given that a permanent repository for high-level waste does not exist in the United States and there is no existing plan to build one, any ‘interim’ storage facility will be an indefinite storage facility, and the risks for New Mexicans, our natural resources and our economy are too high,” Grisham stated in her 2020 letter.
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board is an independent federal agency in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government charged with providing expert analysis to DOE on nuclear projects. Earlier this year, the Donald Trump administration sought the resignations of most of the board members, who were appointed by Biden.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 allows for the use of deep geologic repositories for safe storage and/or disposal of nuclear waste.
