Enviros Push Senate Finance to Kill Nuke Subsidies in Federal Budget
A coalition of environmental and citizens’ watchdog groups urged the Senate Finance Committee to drop millions of dollars in subsidies for nuclear energy from the budget reconciliation bill containing President Joe Biden’s signature domestic spending programs, according to a letter mailed this week.
The roughly $35 billion in nuclear production tax credits proposed in the Build Back Better Act is “particularly wasteful and counterproductive” and “undermines the purpose” of the spending bill, the anti-nuclear groups headlined by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the Senate Finance Committee in a letter dated Tuesday.
“There is nothing transformative about giving yet another federal subsidy to the same nuclear power plants that have benefited from decades of direct and indirect public subsidies,” the letter said.
The anti-nukers pointed out that the feds have already provided roughly $6 billion in nuclear power subsidies into law as part of the Joe Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which the president signed in November. That cash is set to be auctioned off by the Department of Energy, which has said it might take until after new year’s to work out the details of that process.
With Congress facing a logjam to pass a fresh appropriations package to keep federal agencies open after Dec. 3 and an annual military policy bill, media have reported that it might be January, at the earliest, before lawmakers turn their attention to the Build Back Better act, which two key Senate Democrats still oppose.
Senate Energy Heads Take Victory Lap on Nuke Credits at ANS Conference
Both the chair and ranking member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee lauded the recently enacted, multi-billion dollar bailout package for financially-ailing nuclear power plants at an industry conference this week.
“The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee played a central role in developing this broad infrastructure legislation,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), the chairman, said at the American Nuclear Society’s (ANS) annual winter meeting Wednesday. Manchin, appearing virtually, said that the roughly $6 billion in federal funding for nuclear power greenlit when President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure bill in November “will help our nation maintain our civil nuclear edge.”
The civil nuclear credits program “supports the continued operation of our existing reactors,” said the Senate energy panel’s ranking member Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) Tuesday. “And now it’s not just a proposal, but it is now a matter of law,” Barrasso said.
The Department of Energy, which is required under the infrastructure legislation to establish a process for auctioning off the $6 billion in credits, is only just starting to figure out how it will allocate those funds. An agency official told RadWaste Monitor Nov. 9 that it could be “a little while” before more details are available.
Meanwhile, nuclear power plants across the country are closing, and some are struggling to stay open. Michigan’s Palisades plant is slated to close in 2022, and Indian Point in New York went dark in April. Illinois’s Byron and Dresden plants were saved from impending closure this fall by a hail-mary bailout from state lawmakers in Springfield in September.
Canadian Nuke Waste Agency Reaches Testing Milestone for Potential Geological Repository
Canada’s nuclear waste authority is another step closer to determining whether a site in remote Ontario is a suitable location for a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel, according to a recent statement.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has finished borehole testing at a proposed repository site in Ignace, Ontario, according to a news release dated Nov. 23. Completion of borehole work is “a significant milestone” in determining whether the Ignace site, located roughly 60 miles north of the U.S. border, can safely host a geological repository for nuclear waste, the statement said.
Borehole drilling and testing started at the Ignace site in 2017, NWMO said. The organization drilled six one-kilometer holes and removed core samples to test whether the site’s geology is suitable to meet Canada’s regulatory requirements for spent fuel storage.
NWMO is also testing a similar site in South Bruce, Ontario, located alongside Lake Huron. That location has proven to be controversial here in Washington. A coalition of politicians from Great Lakes states, led by Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), urged President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to “take appropriate action” and work with Canada to prevent a nuclear waste repository from being built along the Great Lakes.
NWMO projects it will finish drilling operations at the South Bruce site in 2022.
DOE Nuclear Energy Chief of Staff Richards Out
Andrew Richards, chief of staff for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, is leaving the agency after 10 years for a private-sector job, he told colleagues Monday.
Richards’ last day was to be Tuesday, he said in an email viewed Tuesday by Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. He did not identify his new employer in the email.
A new chief of staff hadn’t been designated as of Tuesday, but a deputy chief should join the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) in the coming weeks and a replacement should be coming “soon,” Richards said.
Richards did not return a request for comment by deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor.
Richards joined DOE in 2011 as a systems analyst. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Maryland.
NE oversees the Energy Department’s nuclear science and nuclear energy programs.
