Skip to main content

GAO Cites Missteps in DOE's Hasty Termination of Yucca Mountain Project

A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Department of Energy’s expedited termination of the Yucca Mountain repository project “did not consistently follow federal policy and guidance for planning or assessing the risks of the shutdown” and showed lax attention to government procedures for disposing of federal property.

The report was requested by Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Joe Barton (R-Texas), Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who asked GAO to determine, among other things, the basis of DOE’s action. Here’s what GAO found:
DOE’s decision to terminate the Yucca Mountain repository program was made for policy reasons, not technical or safety reasons.
The acting principal deputy director of the [Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management] explained Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s thinking this way:
[He said] that the secretary’s decision was based on a proposed change of department policy. … He did not, however, cite any technical concerns or safety issues related to the Yucca Mountain repository. [He] explained that the secretary believes there are better solutions that can achieve a broader national consensus to the nation’s spent fuel and nuclear waste storage needs than Yucca Mountain, although he did not cite any.
The National Academy of Sciences and international science experts continue to believe geologic disposal is the best solution for long-term disposal of nuclear waste, GAO said.

Meanwhile, DOE has spent nearly $15 billion since 1983 to evaluate potential nuclear waste repository sites, mostly to evaluate the Yucca Mountain site in more depth and prepare a license application for it. About 65 percent of this expenditure, or about $9.5 billion, came from the Nuclear Waste Fund. In return for that investment, U.S. taxpayers got a very large, empty hole under a remote mountain. But the funds invested directly in creating and studying the cavernous hole do not give a full picture of the cost to taxpayers, GAO said:
This does not include an estimated $956 million already paid by taxpayers from the U.S. Treasury’s judgment fund, resulting from 74 industry lawsuits, in which courts have ordered the government to compensate utilities for not accepting spent nuclear fuel starting in 1998, as required under the [Nuclear Waste Policy Act]. The government also has incurred $168 million in costs to defend DOE in litigation.
Now DOE apparently wants to start over, from square one.

GAO recommended that Congress consider establishing a more predictable funding mechanism to develop and implement a disposal solution for used nuclear fuel and defense waste and creating an independent organization, outside DOE, to lead the siting and development of a permanent repository.

For another GAO report on the Yucca Mountain project, see this post.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should