US Plan for Nuclear Waste Storage Would Boost Equity, Funding

The Energy Department is moving forward on siting at least one temporary nuclear waste storage facility, betting that a focus on partnering directly with local communities will break decades-long gridlock on finding a home for nuclear waste.

The department aims to find volunteers to host the interim facilities through a revamped siting process, according to a new strategy shared with Bloomberg Law that’s set to publish Tuesday.

The department is also offering $26 million to universities, governments, nonprofits and other entities to assist communities interested in pursuing the siting process. The awardees will be announced in May or early June from an application period that closed in January 2023.

“Prioritizing constructive, community-based input around consent-based solutions has shaped our roadmap for advancing our nation’s spent nuclear fuel management,” Kathryn Huff, the department’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said in a statement. “This process deepens our commitment to transparency and moves us closer to our clean energy future.”

The siting process aims to get the green light from local communities before developing a site to store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste—rather than a top-down siting decision that has rankled state and local officials in the past.

In 1987, Congress designated Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the sole permanent US burial site. Nevada politicians and local communities largely oppose Yucca Mountain, and it’s never been licensed.

Government indecision on finding a centralized nuclear waste storage facility has forced operators to store some 86,000 metric tons of nuclear waste at 75 nuclear power plant sites in 33 states, according to a Government Accountability Office report in 2021. The country’s nuclear waste is projected to grow by about 2,000 metric tons each year, and the government has paid reactor owners about $9 billion for storage, the GAO found at the time.

The department’s consent-based siting strategy focuses on temporary waste storage, with current law requiring a permanent repository be found before a temporary storage site can be approved. The agency isn’t looking for volunteers at this stage in the process. An interim storage facility would allow for the removal of spent nuclear fuel from reactor sites until a final disposal pathway is determined, officials said in the strategy.

The department announced in November 2021 it would take another look at its strategy after an initial plan in 2017 didn’t lead to any new sites. It received hundreds of pages of public comments from tribes, states, local governments, and advocacy groups.

Those who have been involved in US efforts to locate a site for nuclear waste are skeptical—or cautiously optimistic—of the Energy Department’s pledges, pointing to past promises and subsequent failures.

The revised approach the department plans to announce Tuesday pledged to put a greater emphasis on equity and environmental justice.

Public comments “underscore the need to build trust between communities and DOE, ensure fairness in the stakeholder engagement process as a matter of procedural justice, acknowledge historical harms to disadvantaged communities, and prevent any targeting of underserved and vulnerable communities going forward,” the strategy says.

The revised document also promises interested communities to develop additional, site-specific criteria “early in the siting process to ensure that hosting a facility aligns with their goals and interests.”