Yucca Mountain license

The US Department of Energy expects to submit an application this month for a license to construct and operate the long-stalled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, but the schedule for completion of the facility will slip again, according to the program’s top official. Edward Sproat, director of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told congressional appropriators in April that funding shortfalls will prevent the department from meeting its March 2017 target for opening the Nevada repository. But Sproat assured lawmakers that DOE will proceed with the licensing process before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a process that is expected to take three to four years to complete.

Sproat has not yet provided a revised timetable of when Yucca Mountain can begin to accept high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel now held at 121 sites around the nation. But he said that each year the project is delayed beyond 2017 is expected to increase the total cost by $500 million. About $9 billion has been spent already for geological and environmental studies at the site, but the project remains mired in political opposition. Congress selected the Yucca Mountain site for the repository in 1987 and established the Nuclear Waste Fund to finance it. The fund, which currently holds about $21 billion, comes from an assessment on the electricity generated by nuclear plants.