The Department of Energy, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, today proposes to amend its General Guidelines for the Recommendation of Sites for Nuclear Waste Repositories. The DOE is proposing these amendments to clarify and focus the Guidelines to be used in evaluating the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada for development as a repository.

Council Directive 2011/70/EURATOM of 19 July 2011 establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), is an initiative managed by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to work with other nations to develop and deploy advanced nuclear recycling and reactor technologies.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is studying a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for a permanent underground repository for highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear reactors, but delays have pushed back the facility’s opening date to 2010 at the earliest. In the meantime, spent fuel is accumulating at U.S. nuclear plant sites at the rate of about 2,000 metric tons per year. Major options for managing those growing quantities of nuclear spent fuel include continued storage at reactors, construction of a DOE interim storage site near Yucca Mountain, and licensing of private storage facilities.

The U.S. Geological Survey's program for geologic and hydrologic evaluation of physiographic provinces to identify areas potentially suitable for locating repository sites for disposal of high-level nuclear wastes was announced to the Governors of the eight States in the Basin and Range Province on May 6, 1981. Representatives of Arizona, California, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, and Utah, were invited to cooperate with the Federal Government in the evaluation process.

This paper describes the evolution of the process for assessing the hazards of a geologic disposal system for radioactive waste and, similarly, nuclear power reactors, and the relationship of this process with other assessments of risk, particularly assessments of hazards from manufactured carcinogenic chemicals during use and disposal. This perspective reviews the common history of scientific concepts for risk assessment developed to the 1950s.

In this letter, Governor Perry requests that the Texas legislature develop a solution for the management of spent nuclear fuel within Texas, since current federal plans for spent nuclear fuel disposal are not credible. The report by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which summarizes spent nuclear fuel management in the US, is attached to the letter as a reference resource.

In this report, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality provides a concise history of spent nuclear fuel management in the US, briefly discussing disposal and transportation but focusing mostly on storage. The current status of NRC efforts to evaluate issues related to storage are mentioned. The report also describes the waste storage situation at the relatively young 4 nuclear reactor units at 2 sites in Texas and the two small research reactors at the University of Texas and Texas A&M.

Governor Bryant sent a letter to Pete Lyons, Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy regarding the state hosting a geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel as an alternative to the Yucca Mountain repository . Although some communities may have expressed interest to DOE, Governor Bryant is opposed to hosting a repository and asks DOE to consider any state other than Mississippi.

Pete Lyons, Assistant Secretary of Nuclear Energy DOE, responds to the letter by Governor Bryant of Mississippi by noting that a consent-based approach to siting will require achieving acceptance at multiple levels of government: local, state and tribal. Consultation and cooperation will be required to successfully site a disposal system. DOE will be mindful of Governor Bryant's opposition to siting a disposal system in Mississippi.

Texas Governor Rick Perry wrote a letter to the Texas Congressional delegation regarding new solutions to the long term handling of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

The National Plan for Siting High-Level Radioactive Waste Repositories describes the process the Department of Energy (DOE) is using to find sites suitable for disposal of high-level radioactive waste.

Over the course of the last two and a half years, Committee Republicans have reviewed in depth Administration actions associated with the Yucca Mountain Project and disposal of the Nation‘s spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Focusing in particular on the scientific and technical information and processes associated with key policy decisions, the Committee‘s effort included numerous letters to Administration officials, extensive questioning at Committee hearings, and acquisition and review of thousands of pages of internal documents.

The primary goal of the ongoing LLL program is to develop the technology and data base required to license a nuclear repository in a crystalline rock medium, located at or near the Nevada Test Site (NTS). Our secondary goal is to apply this technology in helping the Department of Energy (DOE) develop repositories in other media and locations.

Historical inventories of spent fuel are combined with U.S Department of Energy (DOE) projections of future discharges from commercial nuclear reactors in the United States to provide estimates of spent fuel storage requirements over the next 50 years, through the year 2040. The needs for storage capacity beyond that presently available in the pools are estimated. These estimates incorporate the maximum capacities within current-and planned in-pool storage facilities and any planned transshipments of fuel to ther reactors or, facilities.