The push for a new wave of nuclear power plants has sparked optimism that the technology may be ready to rejoin the build-out of new electricity generation — and finally prod the federal government to address the mountain of radioactive waste that has built up over decades.
That spent fuel, totaling more than 95,000 metric tons, has accumulated mostly from the fleet of reactors built decades ago that provide the U.S. with a fifth of its electricity, and its disposal has posed an intractable problem for the federal government since the dawn of the nuclear age.
Now, the Trump administration is pressing for U.S. companies to invest in the full nuclear life cycle. In January, it issued a request for Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses, calling for states to submit proposals that would see them handle the radioactive material housed at dozens of plants around the country and reprocess it or manage its disposition.
And while those plans remain in their early stages, they represent an attempt to overcome the staunch opposition from nearly every corner of the country to becoming the home to the growing pile of spent fuel that will remain radioactive for thousands of years.
“The waste isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future and a lot of communities aren’t willing to take that risk,” said Tim Judson of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a group critical of nuclear power, who noted that several states still have laws banning the construction of new reactors until a federal repository is built.
Congress sought to address the nuclear waste issue in 1987, recommending the federal government carve out a permanent repository in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain about 80 miles from Las Vegas. It took another 15 years for Congress to formally approve the Yucca project — before it ultimately pulled the plug in 2012 by defunding the work amid sharp opposition from Nevada lawmakers, voters and tribal groups.
Under the law, the Yucca Mountain repository remains the only option for permanently storing the waste, but the Trump administration has sought to attract interest from other states who could see the benefits of hosting multi-billion dollar investments under its plan to develop those new Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), co-chair of Congress’ Spent Nuclear Fuel Solutions Caucus and a key House appropriator on energy, said DOE is taking the right strategy in gauging states’ interest since “Yucca will politically never happen” so long as Nevada remains a swing state.
“Biden didn’t want it. Trump didn’t want it, so it’s not going to happen,” he said.
DOE’s pitch for the innovation campuses is also drawing rare bipartisan praise.
Fleischmann’s co-chair on the caucus, Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), told POLITICO in an interview that the U.S. is “getting closer to a reasonable disposition for this spent fuel in a way that frankly has exceeded my expectations from this administration.”
Without a working geologic repository, high-level radioactive waste is currently stored at 80 sites around the country, including 57 sites that are also home to working nuclear reactors. The Energy Department has long maintained that “most of the nation’s spent fuel is safely and securely stored.”
Recently, DOE has taken interest in reprocessing this spent nuclear fuel, with a goal of recycling it to produce power again. That recycling has been used in France, which depends on nuclear power for the majority of its power, but has not been developed in the United States.
There’s another incentive to develop that reprocessing capacity: The U.S. is facing a substantial domestic nuclear fuel supply shortage. That gap has inspired some U.S.-based companies to pursue nuclear fuel recycling projects, which DOE included as potential options in its “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses” inquiry.
“DOE sees reprocessing as a way out,” Judson said. “At least for the time being.”
A non-Yucca solution?
Many states have weighed in since DOE’s outreach in January — 28 to be exact, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The campuses could include “disposition” of waste and reprocessing nuclear fuel, according to the original request. Though the department does not explicitly reference a repository, POLITICO’s E&E News reported earlier this year that DOE is still looking to develop a permanent, long-term solution to store high-level waste.
That’s a nonstarter for many states, including those that are home to reactors. Nebraska’s response to the DOE inquiry references the federal need for a repository but doesn’t express interest in hosting one. Texas officials made comments along the same lines, and Idaho said it was committed to “collaborating closely” with “neighboring states that are interested in serving as long-term repository locations.”
So far, of the state replies that are public, only Tennessee and Utah have expressed interest in hosting a more permanent storage site.
In its 207-word response to DOE’s original request for information, Tennessee — which is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a major nuclear industry supply chain — repeatedly expressed interest in hosting a long-term storage site.
“The State has also identified next steps for site assessment and testing to identify a long-term geologic repository option in Tennessee,” state officials wrote in the response. “If another state or other states are found to be more suitable locations for a long-term geologic repository, then Tennessee is open to exploring a collaborative solution.”
And Utah, which is home to the San Rafael Energy Lab and is pushing to become a leader in the development of small modular reactors, is also interested.
“In collaboration with DOE, Utah intends for the Innovation Campus to enable innovative full nuclear lifecycle operations,” the state wrote in its response, “including enrichment, fuel fabrication, recycling and reprocessing of used nuclear fuel (UNF), and waste disposition — specifically interim storage and permanent repository.”
Still, any effort to designate a spot other than Yucca Mountain as the site for long-term nuclear waste disposal would have to go through one major obstacle: Congress.
When it amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987, Congress designated Yucca Mountain as the only site that DOE could look toward for a repository. Then in 2002, Congress and then-President George W. Bush declared the Nevada site as the nation’s sole repository for high-level nuclear waste and nuclear spent fuel.
But the Yucca Mountain project has been frozen since fiscal 2010, the last year that Congress appropriated funding to it.
“There has not been any real progress in the spent nuclear fuel management program in the United States since arguably 2010 or so,” said Matt Bowen, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, first enacted in 1982, would need to be overhauled to open the door for a repository in a location besides Yucca Mountain.
The National Association of State Energy Officials also urged action, writing in a March letter to DOE that “congressional action is needed to modernize and clarify the national nuclear waste strategy, enabling stronger federal-state alignment on nuclear lifecycle management.”
A spokesperson from DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy said the department expects it’ll make a selection announcement on its nuclear life cycle innovation campuses inquiry “later this summer.”
Lake Barrett, a former DOE official for radioactive waste management who also worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and was the on-site director for the agency for the clean-up of the Three Mile Island reactor accident, said the new efforts were encouraging after years of inaction, though he acknowledged potential difficulties ahead.
“Exactly how far this will go in solving our national disposal problem, or what to do about the waste is yet to be seen,” he said.
Finding an appropriate site isn’t the only change that experts have been seeking: Earlier this year, a group of energy experts recommended in a report that the federal government hand over responsibility for spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste to an outside organization.
Allison Macfarlane, former chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Obama administration and a co-author of the report, said the United States should follow the example of countries like Canada, Finland and Sweden, “all countries that have made a lot more progress.”
“The (U.S.) leadership changes every few years, therefore the policy direction changes, and that is no way to run a very long-term project, which is what developing a big geologic repository is,” Macfarlane said.
Punting the challenge
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act set a January 1998 deadline for DOE to take responsibility for high-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel. Under the law, the federal government is legally responsible for the permanent disposal of this waste. But in the years since then, new changes have allowed the department to get around that requirement and created a pathway for nuclear facilities to store spent nuclear fuel rather than dispose of it.
In 2014, the NRC approved a final rule establishing that safe storage of spent nuclear fuel is possible up to 60 years or indefinitely in the case a federal repository is not built.
These changes have essentially made some requirements of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act obsolete, some experts in the field say. DOE is still, however, liable for up to around $44.5 billion as of fiscal 2024 for failing to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, which provides at least some financial incentive to handle waste long-term.
“There is no legal forcing function that would require new nuclear projects to address the failure of a long-term waste disposal solution,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Regulatory and legal decisions over decades, Lyman noted, have “essentially disconnected the prospects for a geologic repository from nuclear power development.”
States like Oregon and Maine still maintain prohibitions on developing nuclear power until the federal government comes up with a waste solution, though Illinois and New Jersey recently rolled back similar rules that barred construction of new reactors until the U.S. created a permanent solution for spent nuclear fuel.
“If you’re trying to go to new communities to sell them on a new nuclear power plant, if you do not have the back end of the fuel cycle addressed, then those communities will inevitably believe that they are going to be stuck after the useful life cycle of that power plant,” said Levin. “They’re going to be stuck in perpetuity with the used fuel and that’s a more difficult sell.”
“I think the nuclear industry understands that,” Levin added.
John Kotek, senior vice president of policy development and public affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said that the U.S. has more experience today with dry storage of nuclear waste than when many state moratoriums were enacted over four decades ago, a possible factor in the rollbacks.
“There’s a recognition that while certainly we need resolution to the waste issue, it’s not the short-term hazard that people were touting it to be when a lot of these moratoria were put in place,” Kotek said. “That combination of things will keep the tide moving in the direction of rolling these back, even if some take longer than others.”
