A Senate measure allowing the temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear microreactors failed to clear a House committee on Wednesday. Too many unanswered questions and insufficient public outreach to gain buy-in from Wyoming communities thwarted the effort to support Wyoming’s burgeoning microreactor manufacturing industry.
Senate File 186, “Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage,” failed in the House Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee with three votes for and five against. Committee member J.R. Riggins, a Casper Republican recovering from heart surgery, was excused. Barring an effort to resurrect the bill this session, committee members said they were eager to study the issue during the off-season between sessions known as the interim.
The bill was crafted in response to recent interest from a handful of companies to set up nuclear microreactor manufacturing in the state, including Radiant Industries, which is considering a location in Natrona County. Radiant, along with BWXT Advanced Technologies, want to build small, “modular” reactors that can be deployed across the nation and around the globe. The idea, according to industry officials, is to fuel the reactors at a manufacturing shop, lease them to customers, and then eventually retrieve the reactors — along with the spent fuel — for redeployment.
The business model, they say, only works if they are allowed to “temporarily” store the spent, radioactive nuclear fuel at the manufacturing site until it can be shipped to a permanent storage repository — which does not exist — somewhere in the U.S.
That, along with concerns about the safety of storing radioactive waste materials, earned a “no” vote from Gillette Republican Rep. Christopher Knapp.
“All I’ve received is [messages from] constituents that are very fearful,” Knapp said. “The reason they’re fearful is because the questions haven’t been answered. The questions haven’t been answered for 50 years.”
Proponents of the bill — including Ten Sleep Republican Sen. Ed Cooper, Lander Republican Sen. Lloyd Larsen and Radiant Director of Operations Matt Wilson — assured the committee that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be the primary authority over such a facility, including the waste storage component, and that the federal agency has deemed it to be safe, although such a facility does not yet exist in the United States.
The radioactive waste, Cooper testified, would amount to “a few pounds a year,” and it would be “stored just exactly like it is at every other nuclear facility in the United States.
“There’s 70-some of these [legacy nuclear power plant waste storage] sites scattered around the country,” Cooper continued. “There’s almost 100 million tons of fuel being stored at those sites today, securely. It’s been stored there for 50-plus years. It’s safe, it’s clean and it’s a great opportunity for the state of Wyoming.”
Though the bill would restrict storage to only nuclear fuel materials related to a Wyoming manufacturer, the committee heard concerns from members of the public regarding the safety and security of the site and the transportation of radioactive waste.
“I think even some of the recent news headlines indicate that this [transportation] is a concern,” Lander-based Wyoming Outdoor Council Energy and Climate Policy Director John Burrows said. “Even driving down to Cheyenne last night, in a winter storm, you realize how precarious [travel] can be in Wyoming.
“We would encourage you all to consider those [questions] in an interim study,” Burrows added.
A few years ago, Wyoming lawmakers changed state statute to allow for nuclear fuel waste storage, so long as it is limited to waste tied to a nuclear power generation facility in the state — an accommodation to open the door to TerraPower’s Natrium nuclear power plant planned near Kemmerer. Senate File 186, according to proponents, represents a slight expansion of those laws.
Lawmakers took a bigger swing at opening Wyoming to spent-nuclear fuel storage earlier in the session. House Bill 16, ” Used nuclear fuel storage-amendments,” would have allowed for the “temporary” commercial storage of the waste from any nuclear power reactor in the United States. But the measure did not make it out of the House for further consideration in the Senate.
Radiant has a deal with the U.S. Idaho National Laboratory to test its design — a major step toward commercial deployment, Wilson said. He noted that the passage of SF 186 would enable the company to both raise capital and get a leg up on federal permitting — a years-long process — and that Wyoming is near the top of the company’s list of states to pursue its nuclear microreactor manufacturing endeavor.
“We’re planning on picking up our community engagement efforts [in Wyoming] and broadening the conversation so that folks understand what Radiant is trying to accomplish,” Wilson said.
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
