New Domenici waste bill could start spent-fuel storage in 2011

Washington (Platts)--27Sep2006

Utility spent fuel could be moved off reactor sites to a storage facility
in Nevada as early as fourth-quarter 2011 under nuclear waste legislation
Senator Pete Domenici unveiled Wednesday.

The New Mexico Republican's bill would allow the US Department of Energy
to begin moving utility spent fuel to the planned repository at Yucca Mountain
roughly five years before DOE's 2017 target for the start of repository
operations. DOE would submit two license applications to NRC in 2008. One
application would be a repository, the other would be for a surface storage
facility at the site, a Senate staffer said.

Other key provisions of the bill--which Republican staffers of the Senate
Appropriations subcommittee that controls DOE spending and the Energy and
Natural Resources Committee, both of which Domenici heads, helped
craft--include moving the entire $18 billion Nuclear Waste Fund, a federal
trust fund, off budget and tying the repository program to DOE's Global
Nuclear Energy Partnership program, a fuel-cycle initiative aimed at
spent-fuel reprocessing and recycling.

Domenici acknowledged earlier this month that there isn't enough time to
get a nuclear waste bill through Congress this year but introducing one now
could initiate discussions on changes needed in the Yucca Mountain program.

--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com

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