House Panel OKs Option of Private Nuclear Waste Facility

May 18 - Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

The Energy Department can consider a private facility for temporarily storing nuclear waste before the federal repository at Yucca Mountain is ready to receive it, the House Appropriations Committee decided Wednesday.

That means Private Fuel Storage, a nuclear waste storage site in Tooele County, could be an option for interim nuclear waste storage if Congress allows the Energy Department to go ahead with temporary storage.

The committee approved the $30 billion energy and water spending bill and its accompanying report, which slammed the Energy Department's progress -- or lack thereof -- on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project in Nevada. The report said the committee would accept any further delay in the Yucca project "only if it accompanied interim storage beginning this decade."

The report said the department needs to address the problems of accumulating fuel at commercial nuclear reactors and the government's growing liability for the waste awaiting permanent storage. It included $30 million for interim waste storage if Congress would authorize the department to move ahead with it.

"The only constructive way to address these problems in the near term is for the department actually to begin to move spent fuel away from commercial reactor site and into some version of interim storage," the report said. "These interim storage sites may be located on DOE property, but the department should also investigate the availability of other federal and private sites."

PFS officials are being cautious in their assessment of recent talk on interim storage. Spokeswoman Sue Martin said the consortium would be willing to work with the DOE.

But this week's debate is different from the smaller debate that took place on interim storage last year. House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, told Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, during a floor debate a year ago, "I do not see any reason for the secretary to consider making a private site or a site on tribal land into a DOE site for interim storage. My intent is for the secretary to evaluate storage options at existing DOE sites."

Bishop and the rest of the Utah House delegation sent a letter to Hobson last month reminding him of the statement.

Utah's congressional delegation and the state government strongly opposed any plan to bring nuclear waste in Utah for storage. Beyond transportation risks associated with taking waste through the state, once waste is brought to Utah the fear is it would stay there permanently.

Private Fuel Storage, a licensed nuclear waste storage site on Goshute Indian Reservation land in Tooele County, has asked the Energy Department to pay to move commercial spent fuel to the site and is still talking with utilities to see if any would be interested in helping finance the project. Several original investors backed out last year and the site still faces transportation obstacles.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has repeatedly said that PFS is not part of the department's overall strategy for handling nuclear waste. It is not clear if an approval by Congress to go ahead with interim storage could change that strategy.

The Energy Department was supposed to take nuclear power plant waste in 1998 and put it into the Yucca Mountain repository planned for 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Nuclear power users pay a fee for their electricity that goes into a special fund designed specifically to pay for the storage site.

But Yucca remains far from finished so the nuclear utilities have sued the department for the delay. The department estimates that every year Yucca is delayed beyond its subsequent 2010 opening date, it will cost the federal government $1 billion per year "with a conservative estimate of $500 million in legal liability and $500 million to monitor and guard defense spent fuel and high level radioactive waste at DOE sites," according to the report.

Hobson said after Wednesday's meeting that the department should put out a request for proposals and see who would be interested in storing the waste. The request could be for interim storage itself or for part of the administration's new plan to reprocess used nuclear fuel through the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

Hobson stressed that he wants any interim storage program to be integrated with a reprocessing effort.

"In this committee's view, if any site refuses to provide interim storage as needed to support the operation of an integrated recycling facility, at whatever scale, then that site should be eliminated from all further consideration under GNEP," according to the report.

The committee approved an amendment offered by Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ohio, that slashed an additional $30 million from GNEP and put it toward funding for energy conservation and weatherization activities. The administration asked for $250 million to fund GNEP activities. The bill originally contained $150 million, but that amendment dropped it to $120 million.

E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com