Factsheet about DOE High Burnup Research Cask Project (HBURC) dated April 2025.

Consent-based siting consortia support DOE's efforts to facilitate inclusive community engagement and elicit public feedback on consent-based siting, management of spent nuclear fuel, and federal consolidated interim storage. The 12 awardees are comprised of various organizations to help reach communities across the country and remove barriers to participate in DOE's consent-based siting process.

Awardees have made significant progress in carrying out community engagement activities and providing direct grants to communities wanting to learn more.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has established a Tribal Collaboration Initiative (TCI) that will ensure federally recognized Tribes have direct and meaningful input into DOE’s consent-based siting (CBS) process for one or more federal consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs). Establishing a TCI ensures federally recognized Tribal interests and concerns are directly communicated and accurately represented to DOE, as the agency continues developing the siting process.

Consent-based siting consortia support DOE's efforts to facilitate inclusive community engagement and elicit public feedback on consent-based siting, management of spent nuclear fuel, and federal consolidated interim storage. The 12 awardees are comprised of various organizations to help reach communities across the country and remove barriers to participate in DOE's consent-based siting process.

Awardees have made significant progress in carrying out community engagement activities and providing direct grants to communities wanting to learn more.

Consent-based siting consortia support DOE's efforts to facilitate inclusive community engagement and elicit public feedback on consent-based siting, management of spent nuclear fuel, and federal consolidated interim storage. The 12 awardees are comprised of various organizations to help reach communities across the country and remove barriers to participate in DOE's consent-based siting process.

Awardees have made significant progress in carrying out community engagement activities and providing direct grants to communities wanting to learn more.

This is the information sheet for Spent Nuclear Fuel Package Performance Demonstration (PPD).

This is an information poster for PPD stakeholders.

This is a PPD poster with information for Tribes

Mothers for Nuclear Informational Flyer

Understanding DOE’s Critical Decision Process: Progress Toward a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility for Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel

The critical decision (CD) process is used by the Department of Energy (DOE) to manage the Department’s large-scale, long-term projects, also known as capital projects. CD-0 was recently approved for DOE’s Consolidated Interim Storage Facility project. Learn more about this milestone.

What is Consent-Based Siting?

Consent-based siting is an approach to siting facilities that prioritizes the participation and needs of people and communities and seeks their willing and informed consent to accept a project in their community. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is using a consent-based siting approach to identify one or more sites for federal consolidated interim storage facilities for commercial spent nuclear fuel.

State decisions regarding a repository for high-level radioactive waste have an extraordinary intergenerational significance. The academic legal discussion has increasingly strengthened the status of future generations in constitutional law. In its recent decision on the German Climate Protection Act, the Federal Constitutional Court equally emphasised that state actors have an obligation to protect future generations. Fundamental rights of future generations thus have an anticipated effect in the present.

With the termination of the Yucca Mountain project, which was proposed to be our nation’s first repository for the disposal of military and civilian spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, the future of nuclear waste management and disposal in this country became increasingly uncertain. Interim storage has been advocated by many as a temporary solution while a permanent solution is studied for potentially several more decades to come.

In October 2022, the NEA Forum on Stakeholder Confidence (FSC) organised, in collaboration with the Belgian Agency for Radioactive Waste and Enriched Fissile Materials (ONDRAF/NIRAS), a national workshop in Dessel, Belgium, to explore the topic of stakeholder involvement across generations.

Building on previous work on this topic, participants gathered to discuss how to keep local communities involved in radioactive waste management after site selection, how to engage youth as key stakeholders and which approaches can be used to communicate with stakeholders now and in the future.

The U.S. Department of Energy is pursuing one or more federal consolidated interim storage facilities to store the nation's commercial spent nuclear fuel in the near-term using a multistage consent-based approach that puts communities' interest at the forefront.