Washington (Platts)--11Jan2013/314 pm EST/2014 GMT

With the "appropriate authorizations" from the US Congress, the Obama administration plans to have an interim storage facility by 2021 that would have an initial focus on accepting spent fuel from shut power reactors, the US Department of Energy said Friday in a report.

The plan is included in the department's response to recommendations the federal Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future issued nearly a year ago. The DOE-appointed commission had the task of evaluating alternatives to the department's proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, which DOE abandoned in 2010, and of recommending a new national strategy on spent fuel.

DOE said in the report that the department also would move toward siting and licensing a larger interim storage facility that would be operational by 2025 "that will have sufficient capacity to provide flexibility in the waste-management system and allows for acceptance of enough used fuel to reduce expected government liabilities."

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The government's liability grows at a rate of $500 million/year for each year it does not have a facility in which to store and/or dispose of utility spent fuel. Under a contract the department signed with nuclear utilities in 1983, DOE was supposed to begin disposing utility spent fuel in January 1998. Utility damage claims, as a result of that default, are paid out of the taxpayer-funded Federal Judgment Fund.

Other work during the next 10 years, DOE said, will be aimed at making "demonstrable progress on the siting and characterization" of potential repository sites. DOE said the work would be targeted at having a geologic repository by 2048 for the disposal of spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste.

In January 2012, the BRC recommended that DOE move the civilian waste program out of the department to a separate entity and that a consent-based process be used to site one or more interim storage facilities and one or more repositories. The BRC also recommended the new organization has greater access to the Nuclear Waste Fund, a federal trust fund established in 1982 to bankroll the disposal of utility spent fuel.

DOE said in the report that the Obama administration endorses the commission's recommendations and believes they would provide a good "starting point" for a new national program for the management and disposal of utility spent fuel.

DOE said that full implementation of its program will require legislative action. It added that legislation also would have to detail "the requirements for consent-based siting; a reformed funding approach that provides sufficient and timely resources; and the establishment of a new organization to implement the program; the structure of which should balance greater autonomy with the need for continued Executive and Legislative branch oversight."

DOE added that, in the meantime, the administration, through the department, "is undertaking activities within existing congressional authorization to plan for the eventual transportation, storage and disposal of used nuclear fuel." It said activities range from "examining waste-management system design concepts, to developing plants for consent-based siting processes, to conducting research and development on the suitability of various geologies for a repository."

--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com
--Edited by Valarie Jackson, valarie_jackson@platts.com

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