The Trump administration has selected five states as candidate locations to take atomic waste, in the latest attempt to solve the United States’s decadeslong deadlock over long-term storage for spent nuclear fuel.
As President Donald Trump has pushed to quadruple domestic nuclear capacity by 2050 and rapidly expand the development of small advanced reactors and large AP1000s to meet the surging energy demand from artificial intelligence, there have been growing concerns around the amount of nuclear waste that the new projects will generate.
More than 95,000 metric tons of nuclear waste from commercial reactors has piled up across the country, and the administration estimates that number could nearly double in the coming years.
For years, nuclear power plants, test reactors, and similar projects have primarily relied on temporary on-site storage for any contaminated radioactive waste material. This is largely the result of intense political opposition to the only other permanent plan put forth by the U.S. government for nuclear waste storage: Yucca Mountain.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 required the Department of Energy to select a deep underground repository to store spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. Five years later, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was designated as the sole location to store this atomic waste, though it took another 15 years for Congress to approve the project.
However, by 2012, the funding for Yucca Mountain was pulled, and the project was essentially canceled.
More than a decade later, Congress has not passed any legislation supporting the long-term storage of nuclear waste at any other facilities, leaving reactor operators to rely on temporary solutions.
Having no permanent solution for waste has blocked nuclear energy development in several states, including California, which has a moratorium on new nuclear plants in place until a federal permanent waste plan is established.
The Trump administration is attempting to address this impasse by funding the development of Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses in several states.
These proposed campuses would support activities across the entire nuclear fuel lifecycle, including fuel fabrication, enrichment, reprocessing, and disposition. Some states involved could even support reactor development, power generation, and advanced manufacturing.
On Tuesday, the Department of Energy selected five initial states as potential host locations for these campuses: Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho.
“These campuses will be massive generators of economic growth, create thousands of high-paying jobs, and be crucial to unleashing America’s nuclear renaissance,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said. “The innovative concept is a direct result of President Trump’s leadership and ambitious directives to restore the domestic nuclear fuel cycle and get America’s nuclear industry growing again.”
Twenty-six states had submitted applications for consideration.
The administration has said that the construction of these campuses could attract up to $50 billion in capital investment, create nearly 25,000 jobs, and generate as much as $10 billion in state and local tax revenue.
To clear the path for these states to handle nuclear waste, internal documents reviewed by Politico reveal, the White House is also seeking legislative changes.
TRUMP CELEBRATES NUCLEAR DEVELOPERS WHO HIT AMBITIOUS JULY 4 DEADLINE FOR NEW REACTORS
Specifically, officials are looking to allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reimpose a fee on nuclear generation for waste disposal and change how waste is classified to give the states more flexibility.
The White House is also reportedly planning to scrap Yucca Mountain as the sole storage site for high-level atomic waste.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
