A panel of the Wyoming Legislature is recommending that lawmakers consider new legislation that would advance tentative plans for a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in the state.
The recommendations are included in a report submitted for next week’s meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Minerals, Business, and Economic Development Committee.
Specifically, according to the committee’s Spent Fuel Rods Subcommittee: The full panel should consider enabling legislation authorizing additional evaluation of an interim used fuel facility in Wyoming, along with a bill allowing state agencies to start talks with the federal government on licensing and constructing of such a site.
State regulations on radioactive waste storage facilities would also have to be revised to allow for the spent fuel operation, the subcommittee said. Specifically, Wyoming Statute 35-11-1506(e)(i) says such a facility can be authorized solely if “operated on the site of and to store the waste produced by a nuclear power generation facility operating within the state.”
Wyoming has no nuclear power plants. Even if it did, the vast majority of spent fuel accepted for storage would come from other states.
“The Subcommittee discussed the need to repeal that paragraph before a temporary storage facility and agreement with the Department of Energy could proceed,” according to the report from the six-member panel, consisting of Republicans from both chambers of the state Legislature.
Wyoming is a potential new entrant into the competition to become temporary home to some portion of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, a stockpile of over 80,000 metric tons of radioactive waste that grows by about 2,000 metric tons yearly. Separate corporate teams have already applied for Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses to build and operate facilities in Texas and New Mexico. With federal approval, they could begin storage in the early 2020s.
Advocates, led by Spent Fuel Rods Subcommittee Chairman Jim Anderson (R), see potential spent fuel storage as one means of offsetting the Wyoming’s troubled coal industry. However, spent fuel storage has been estimated to only generate $10 million in annual revenue for the state.
