Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the chairman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said yesterday that he was in favor of a waiver that would allow research quantities of spent nuclear fuel into Idaho, but he urged Department of Energy cleanup officials to settle differences with Idaho officials over cleanup milestones. Former Govs. Cecil Andrus (D) and Phil Batt (R), both of whom worked to establish the 1995 Settlement Agreement banning additional spent fuel from entering the state, threatened the Department of Energy earlier this month with litigation should it move forward with planned shipments of commercial spent nuclear fuel to the Idaho National Laboratory for research purposes. “I really do not want the [Environmental Management] side of this laboratory in Idaho to affect the lab side and … if they prevent us from bringing in research quantities of nuclear material it would greatly affect the future of INL,” Simpson told acting DOE cleanup chief Mark Whitney and Deputy Under Secretary for Management and Performance David Klaus yesterday.
Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R) has said he is open to providing DOE a one-time waiver to allow DOE to send the spent fuel for research purposes, but only if the Department provides an enforceable time frame for coming back into compliance with a 1995 Settlement Agreement. The fuel shipments would be necessary to support Department’s high burnup fuel study, conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute. The research is aimed at better understanding the effects of high burn-up fuel aging on dry storage cask systems and to support DOE’s ongoing research and development to advance understanding of the long-term aging of spent fuel. Simpson urged Whitney and Klaus to meet with Idaho officials to resolve the disagreements. “I really don’t want to get these two entities going at one another so I would encourage you to get out and resolve these differences so we can resolve the overall issue of allowing these research quantities of material to come into the state because it makes sense to do it,” he said. “It’s the smart thing to do.”
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