The federal government is likely to rack up tens of billions of dollars in liability over the Department of Energy’s decades-long failure to meet its legal mandate to build a permanent home for spent fuel from U.S. commercial power reactors, lawmakers and panelists said Tuesday during a congressional hearing on U.S. nuclear waste management.
More than $6 billion has already been paid through the Treasury Department’s judgment fund to settle lawsuits filed by nuclear utilities forced to pay for on-site storage of what is now more than 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel spread around the nation.
A number of slightly different projections for the total liability were mentioned during a session of the House Oversight interior, energy, and environment subcommittee: Panel Chairman Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) mentioned $29 billion; Anthony O’Donnell, chairman of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said roughly $27 million; and Katie Tubb, a policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Economic Freedom, cited a 2016 DOE estimate of $24.7 million.
Both O’Donnell and Tubb noted that their numbers were based on DOE’s capacity to begin accepting used fuel by 2021. Both indicated that is unlikely to happen.
“The nuclear industry estimates at least $50 billion in liabilities,” Tubb said in her opening statement to the subcommittee.
Witnesses and legislators expressed varying levels of discontent over the federal government’s failure to make significant progress on building a permanent repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, as demanded in Congress’ 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
The Obama administration effectively canceled the project by cutting off funding, but the Trump administration has sought to revive Yucca Mountain by funding licensing application activities for both DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in fiscal 2018. Congress is divided on the matter: The House has backed the administration’s request, while the Senate energy budget plan zeroes out licensing funding for Yucca.
“The United States needs, and consumers have paid for, a permanent storage solution – and nothing less,” O’Donnell said. “To put it bluntly, the citizens of states and localities have the federal government’s waste and the federal government has our money.”
