The Nuclear Waste Fund held $42.6 billion in U.S. Treasury securities at the end of the 2020 fiscal year, up from $40.9 billion last year, according to this year’s annual independent Department of Energy audit.
Accounting firm KPMG performs the audit each year under the DOE’s Office of Inspector General. The federal fund is meant to pay for a permanent repository for the country’s supply of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Until legislators greenlight plans to move forward with the project, which was effectively put on indefinite hold in 2010, the money in the fund will continue to accrue interest. It’s unlikely anything will move forward during the Biden administration — the president-elect has for years denounced the project, as vice president during the Obama administration and earlier this year in response to comments made by President Trump.
The fair value of the fund’s securities rose to $54.3 billion from $49.3 billion in the previous year.
The amount the federal government has spent from the fund — $11.4 billion — is unchanged from last year. That includes money previously paid to prepare DOE’s application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to license the repository, plus appropriations to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, the now-defunct Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator and the NRC.
The Nuclear Waste Fund was created in 1982 with the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which gave the DOE responsibility for disposing of the country’s supply of civilian- and defense-related radioactive waste. A 1987 amendment to the bill designated Yucca Mountain the favored site to store the spent fuel and high level waste.
Despite a number of contracts asserting the federal government would by 1988 begin collecting waste from nuclear utilities, which are required to pay into the fund, the unbuilt Yucca Mountain repository still hasn’t been licensed to operate and is unlikely to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission anytime soon.
