Most of the cash greenlit for the Department of Energy’s nuclear waste activities should go towards a program to designate a federal interim storage facility, the House Appropriations Committee recommended this week in its budget for the 2022 fiscal year.
That proposal survived Friday’s three-hour markup of an energy and water bill Friday, after which the 2022 spending proposal sailed through the House Appropriations Committee and to the chamber floor on a 33-24 party line vote. The full House had not scheduled a vote at deadline. Politico reported the measure could be part of a minibus package, with other spending bills, that the House votes on before August.
Nobody brought up federal interim storage at Friday’s mark, but one Texas lawmaker offered and withdrew an amendment aimed at killing two proposed, commercially operated interim nuclear waste storage sites along the Texas-New Mexico border.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said his amendment would have prevented the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from “unilaterally” approving the commercial interim storage facilities proposed in New Mexico by Holtec and in Texas by an Orano-Waste Control Specialists team called Interim Storage Partners.
Cuellar told RadWaste Monitor after the markup that he believes the proposed Interim Storage Partners site in his state violates federal law but that he would not bring his withdrawn amendment to the House floor. Instead, he and Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), the Appropriations Committee’s ranking Republican, will work with the committee to “come up with some language to address” consent-based siting and the proposed interim storage facilities.
“As the Department moves forward with planning for an integrated system for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, the Committee encourages the Department to include planning for the removal of spent nuclear fuel from sites located near Indian reservations and cities,” the report said.
Chair of the Appropriations Committee’s energy and water subcommittee Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) told RadWaste Monitor Monday that she thought the bill “provides enough authority” for a federal interim storage inquiry to move forward. Kaptur said that she thinks the Biden administration may soon start looking for potential host sites.
Meanwhile, the detailed bill report accompanying the energy and water bill directs DOE to consider the impacts of nuclear waste disposal on indigenous communities.
Overall, the bill the House Appropriations Committee approved Friday will provide DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy with a little less cash than it asked for in fiscal 2022. The committee’s proposal gave the go-ahead on roughly $1.67 billion of the $1.85 billion the department asked for. The proposal also recommends that the office focus its spending on developing and demonstrating private-sector advanced nuclear technologies “by the late 2020s.”
Meanwhile, the House committee’s bill would give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a net allocation of around $131 million, a figure that accounts for the roughly $750 million that NRC expects to recover from licensing fees. That’s consistent with the commission’s request from earlier this month.
