New Mexico counties move toward establishing spent nuclear fuel
storage site
Washington (Platts)--29Apr2015/550 pm EDT/2150 GMT
Holtec International has teamed up with two New Mexico counties to
establish an interim nuclear waste storage facility in the southeastern
part of the state.
Their effort has the support of New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, who
informed Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz earlier in April that the
counties have already selected a site that has been "vetted
extensively."
The joint venture was announced during a news conference Wednesday in
Albuquerque.
Holtec, which supplies equipment and systems to the nuclear power
industry and other energy sectors, as well as nuclear waste management
technologies, announced a memorandum of agreement with the Eddy-Lea
Energy Alliance.
The alliance is a limited liability entity made up of Eddy and Lea
counties and the towns of Carlsbad and Hobbs in those counties,
respectively.
The US Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a defense
transuranic waste repository, is near Carlsbad.
Urenco USA, a Louisiana Energy Services uranium enrichment facility, is
located near Hobbs.
The two counties, through the alliance, jointly own 1,000 acres in
southeastern New Mexico where they would like to site an interim storage
facility.
"There is a strong pre-existing scientific and nuclear operations
workforce in the area, and the dry, remote region is well-suited for an
interim storage site," Martinez said in an April 10 letter to Moniz.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, whose Senior Vice President of Government
Affairs Alex Flint spoke at the news conference, said the Holtec-ELEA
agreement would develop an interim site "to store all of the used
nuclear fuel produced in the United States and all canisters [of spent
fuel] currently licensed in dry storage in the country."
The storage facility developed under the agreement will be modeled on
Holtec's Hi-Storm Umax storage system, which will store the spent fuel
in steel and concrete containers below ground.
Martinez said in her letter that there "is a significant and growing
national need for such an interim storage facility" in the US.
"Millions of taxpayer dollars are currently being spent on monitoring
and oversight of spent fuel each year, and millions more are being spent
on settlement payments related to waste disposition," she said.
"These communities in New Mexico support safely moving spent fuel to a
consolidated interim storage site using proven technology which is the
most sensible approach to this problem until a permanent and long-term
solution is available," Martinez wrote. "Dry cask storage is a proven,
passive and safe system that has been used since 1984 with no adverse
incidents."
There now are more than 70,000 mt of utility spent fuel stored in the
US, and that inventory grows at a rate of roughly 2,000 mt/year. Much of
the spent fuel at US power reactors has been moved from spent fuel
storage pools into dry storage systems at the plant sites.
The US has been grappling with what to do with its growing inventory of
utility spent fuel since DOE dismantled the Yucca Mountain repository
project in Nevada in 2010, two years after submitting a repository
license application to the agency.
DOE attributed that action in part to the state of Nevada's unyielding
opposition to the proposed disposal facility, which if licensed and
constructed, would be roughly 95 miles outside of Las Vegas.
DOE's action left the US without a path forward for that waste.
By the time DOE dismantled the Yucca Mountain project, it was already 12
years late in meeting a contractual obligation with utilities with
nuclear plants. Under that deal, it was to have begun disposing of their
spent fuel by January 31, 1998.
No spent fuel has been disposed of, and nuclear operating companies
have filed damage claims against the federal government seeking to
recover billions of dollars in costs incurred as a result of their
extended onsite storage of the used fuel.
"The Department of Energy estimates the total liability for the federal
government for this failure to manage used nuclear fuel at $27.1
billion, including $4.5 billion already paid out of the US Treasury's
Judgment Fund," according to NEI. "This estimate assumes that the DOE
begins accepting used nuclear fuel in 2021."
DOE's ability to do that has been tied to its use of a
yet-to-be-developed, consent-based siting process that could require it
have consent on local, state, and tribal levels before siting a nuclear
waste facility.
Martinez's press secretary Michael Lonergan said in a Tuesday email that
the governor wrote the letter to Moniz shortly after the energy
secretary announced March 25 that DOE plans to initiate work before the
end of the year on the development of a consent-based siting process.
DOE will kick off that work with "calls for discussion" and town-hall
type meetings, Moniz said in March.
Separately, the House of Representatives energy and water funding bill
for fiscal 2016, which is expected to move to the House floor for a vote
Thursday, would bar DOE from using spending any Nuclear Waste Fund money
for work not related to a Yucca Mountain repository, including work on a
consent-based siting process.
The waste fund, a federal trust fund, was established by Congress to
fund the disposal of utility spent fuel using a special fee collected
from nuclear utility customers.
The White House Office of Management and Budget said Tuesday that
President Barack Obama strongly opposes the bill and if presented with
it, his senior advisers would recommend he veto it.
Among the president's objections are the bill's funding for a Yucca
Mountain repository and its ban on DOE work on alternatives to that
project, including its prohibition on the development of a consent-based
siting process and interim storage of utility spent fuel.
The Senate version of the appropriations bill, which has not yet been
issued, is expected to embrace interim storage and consent-based siting.
Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and chairman of the
Senate appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over DOE spending,
has co-sponsored a bipartisan nuclear waste bill in the chamber that
calls for the use of a consent-based approach to site one or more
interim storage facilities as well as repositories.
--Elaine Hiruo,
elaine.hiruo@platts.com
--Edited by Keiron Greenhalgh,
keiron.greenhalgh@platts.com
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