The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $982.8 billion spending package last month that includes millions in funding to establish a program to temporarily store nuclear waste from the nation’s power plants such as the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS).
The four-bill appropriations package, which passed in a 226-203 vote on June 19, provides several federal agencies funding for Fiscal 2020, beginning Oct. 1. The Department of Energy will have a budget of $37.1 billion, with $25 million allocated for the creation of the consolidated interim storage program.
Rep. Mike Levin, who represents California’s 49th District comprising the cities of San Clemente, Dana Point and San Juan Capistrano, lobbied for the $25 million that, if enacted, would pay for the initiation of the program, site preparation and the coordination of transporting the spent fuel.
Currently, the U.S. doesn’t have a permanent repository to store nuclear waste, as power plants have been responsible for the storage of its own spent fuel. Proposals to construct temporary storage sites in New Mexico and Texas are currently going through the application process, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
At SONGS, Southern California Edison was recently given the greenlight by the NRC to resume storage activities, which was put on .hiatus following an incident last August, when a canister carrying spent fuel got stuck on a guiding ring while being lowered into a vertical receptacle.