THE REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT AND THE CONGRESS BY THE SECRETARY OF ENERGY ON THE NEED FOR A SECOND REPOSITORY

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended (NWPA), establishes a process for the siting, construction and operation of one or more national repositories for permanent disposal of the Nation’s spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW). In 1987, after the Department of Energy (the Department or DOE) had conducted studies of nine potential repository sites located throughout the United States, Congress amended the NWPA and selected the Yucca Mountain site in Nye County, Nevada as the only site for further study for the first national repository. In 2002, Congress passed and the President signed Public Law 107-200, which approved Yucca Mountain as the site for that repository. On June 3, 2008, the
Department submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) seeking construction authorization for the repository at Yucca Mountain.
This report is prepared pursuant to Section 161 of the NWPAi, which requires the Secretary of Energy (the Secretary) to report to the President and to the Congress on or after January 1, 2007, but not later than January 1, 2010, on the need for a second repository. In preparing this report, the Department has considered the relevant statutory provisions of the NWPA, the current and projected inventories of SNF and HLW, and the projected capacity of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository.