The Report to the President and the Congress by the Secretary of Energy on the Need to 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.
In particular, the Department has considered the provisions of the NWPA which currently set a statutory capacity limit on the amount of commercial and government-owned SNF and HLW that can be emplaced in the Nation’s first repository to 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal (MTHM), until a second repository is in operation. Specifically, Section 114(d) of the NWPAii “prohibit[s] the emplacement in the first repository of a quantity of spent fuel containing in excess of 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal or a quantity of solidified high-level radioactive waste resulting from the reprocessing of such a quantity of spent fuel until such time as a second repository is in operation.”
The Department has also considered President Reagan’s decision in 1985, pursuant to Section 8 of the NWPA, to use the disposal capacity of the first repository for the disposal of HLW, including DOE and U.S. Navy SNF, resulting from national defense activities. Subsequent to President Reagan’s decision, the Department established a policy to allocate ninety percent (90%) of the first repository capacity (in MTHM) to civilian SNF and ten percent (10%) of the repository capacity to Department-managed SNF and HLW. Accordingly, 63,000 MTHM of the 70,000 MTHM statutory limit is allocated to civilian waste and 7,000 MTHM of the 70,000 MTHM statutory limit is allocated to national defense waste.
The Department has considered that there is currently more than 58,000 MTHM of commercial SNF in storage in the United States, and the total inventory of commercial SNF continues to increase at a rate of about 2,000 MTHM per year. DOE expects that, by 2010, commercial nuclear power plants will have generated the entire amount of commercial SNF (that is, 63,000 MTHM) that is allocated for disposal in the Yucca Mountain repository under the current statutory cap. Assuming all existing operating nuclear reactors in the United States request license extensions from the NRC to operate for 60 years, the amount of commercial SNF from these reactors in the United States requiring permanent disposal is projected to be approximately 130,000 MTHM. Further, there is currently approximately 12,800 MTHM of DOE SNF and HLW, including naval SNF, in storage at government sites. This quantity exceeds the 7,000 MTHM of national defense waste allocated for disposal in the Yucca Mountain repository. Additionally, nuclear utilities have expressed their intention to file, by the end of 2010, license applications seeking approval for the construction and operation of 34 new nuclear reactors. If these reactors become operational, they would substantially increase the amount of nuclear generation and will result in additional spent nuclear fuel requiring disposal. Unless Congress raises or eliminates the current statutory capacity limit of 70,000 MTHM in the NWPA, the Nation will need a second repository for SNF and HLW.
To address this need, the Department has further considered the following three alternatives and possible ways to move forward:
(1)
Remove the statutory limit of 70,000 MTHM for Yucca Mountain and dispose of currently projected quantities of SNF and HLW at the Yucca Mountain repository;
(2)
Begin the process of siting, designing, licensing and constructing a second repository as soon as possible so it will be ready to receive SNF and HLW by the time 70,000 MTHM has been emplaced in the Yucca Mountain repository; or,
(3)
Defer the decision and prolong the time commercial SNF generated after 2010 will be stored at reactor sites, as well as the time DOE SNF and HLW will be stored at DOE sites.
In addressing the first alternative of removing the statutory limit and placing more than 70,000 MTHM of SNF and HLW at Yucca Mountain, the Department has considered the additional area available for disposal at Yucca Mountain. The 70,000 MTHM statutory limit that Congress established in 1982 for the first repository is not based on any technical considerations related to Yucca Mountain. Studies indicate that three times, or more, this statutory limit could be accommodated by expanding the repository layout at Yucca Mountain.
In addressing the second alternative of developing a second repository, the Department has considered previous work performed to identify candidate repository sites. That work shows that all states in the contiguous United States have an identified potential site or area that could be considered for a second repository.
In considering the third alternative of deferring a decision, the Department has considered the impacts of leaving uncertain the disposal path for the commercial SNF and national defense waste in excess of the current 70,000 MTHM statutory limit. Each year a decision is deferred, the Federal Government will incur additional financial liabilities. In addition, deferral of a decision increases the possibility the Department will be unable to honor, in a full and timely manner, its commitments to states that currently store national defense HLW and SNF within their borders—including Washington, Idaho, and South Carolina, among others.
Finally, the Department has also considered legislative actions that would be needed to implement the alternatives. The first alternative would require removing the current statutory limit of 70,000 MTHM, as the Administration has proposed previously. The second alternative would require legislative action to specify the process for siting, design, licensing and constructing a second repository. The third alternative would require Congressional direction to the Department on how to address the damages resulting from the delay and on what to do with the HLW and SNF that could not be placed in Yucca Mountain.
As set forth more fully below, the Secretary recommends that the preferred course of action is legislative removal of the statutory capacity limit of 70,000 MTHM. Removal of this statutory limit would defer the urgency in evaluating the issues associated with a second repository.