S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman. On today's show , we'll tell you about plans for San Onofre spent nuclear waste. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. Here's a question. What should America do with its radioactive waste ? Well , right now , the federal government is trying to figure that out and wants to know if any states are interested in hosting sites to store or reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The U.S. Department of Energy put out the call last Wednesday and says it's seeking input through April 1st. U.S. representative Mike Levin has been urging the government to work on this issue. He represents the coastal areas of north San Diego County , and he joins me now. Welcome , Mike.
S2: Thank you. Jade , good to be with you.
S1: So glad to have you here. So the Energy Department is seeking interest from states to host sites , which are being called nuclear lifecycle innovation campuses.
S2: I've been working on this issue now since I came to Congress in 2019 , and when I started , it was a literal and figurative mess. You had sites all across the country with spent nuclear fuel , and really nowhere for that fuel to go. The Yucca mountain project in Nevada had been stopped back in 2010 , and you had really no roadmap , no path forward for spent nuclear fuel in the United States. So we got to work. We assembled a task force of local leaders , including the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the former former Navy mayor of San Diego. They put out a report with findings and recommendations of what needed to be done. And we've deliberately and slowly and look , I'm very impatient about this , Jade. I wish it would all go faster , but deliberately. We've made great progress on that plan. One piece was that we needed to have a new caucus of members of Congress , a new generation. We've done that. And another was that we needed to move from a top down model where the federal government told Nevada that it would be the repository for the nation's spent nuclear fuel to to a collaborative model. And. Yep , go ahead.
S1: Let me ask you this because you mentioned the Yucca mountain in Nevada , and it was proposed as a sole site as the the sole permanent site in 87. And it didn't work out. We've yet to find solutions. So could it be years , decades ? You know , before we start talking about where spent fuel from San Onofre is expected to go and the safety protocols that would need to be in place during transportation.
S2: So years ? Yes. But decades ? No , in my view. And we have been able to now engage with the collaborative siting process. And we have developed I say week as on the Appropriations Committee is where we helped fund all of this , a new railcar system that will be able to safely transport spent nuclear fuel across the United States , called the Atlas system. So we've been able to secure around a quarter of $1 billion for these efforts in the last seven years. And I'm on the Energy and Water subcommittee where these funds come from. And we've had a now an opportunity through the first Trump administration , then through the Biden administration. Now , the second Trump administration , one of the one of the only areas where I consistently work on a good faith , bipartisan basis is this area. And we will continue to do that work until that waste at San Onofre has somewhere to go. It's the symptom of a bigger problem. Bigger problem is there are no sites in the entire country to host spent nuclear fuel as of now , and we're fixing that.
S1: You know , this initiative is a departure from the long held plan to store all of the nation's spent fuel in one location.
S2: I'm going to be just blunt about this , Jade. So long as Nevada is a swing state every four years in the presidential contest , it is not going to be the home to the nation's spent nuclear fuel because most in Nevada do not want it. The representatives , the senators , the governors over the years. And as long as that's the case , it won't matter who's in the white House. The other thing is , we absolutely have an opportunity with the economic development that may come from hosting spent nuclear fuel in other states and other places where governors and localities and , and other leaders are interested and would actually welcome hosting that spent fuel.
S1: What kind of economic development are we talking about here ? Because I'm trying to grapple and understand what the benefit would be for a state to say , sure. Well , host the spent nuclear fuel here.
S2: Jobs , research and development , the potential to perhaps use that spent nuclear fuel for recycling or reprocessing , although there's real drawbacks with that. My belief is that there will be takers. The the Department of Energy is seeking to get a number of states engaged and interested , and then they intend to be very pragmatic about what it may require. I think what's important for people to understand is that the Trump administration wants to quadruple the amount of nuclear power in the United States. That's per their executive order last year. I don't necessarily agree with with that objective , but so long as it's the objective of the administration , so long as they intend for there to be a nuclear renaissance , we must fix the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. And that means having storage sites where you can responsibly , safely store spent nuclear fuel. As we also try to reconsider the best place for a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel that is not Yucca mountain in Nevada , that is both technically and politically appealing. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S2: And I think the importance here is to be transparent and accountable. I do have concerns with some of the new , um , uh , you know , corners that are being cut , or at least the proposal by the administration is to cut some corners with regard to nuclear safety. I think that's absolutely the wrong thing to do. And I think that you can safely store spent nuclear fuel in places that are less environmentally sensitive than San Onofre , for example , San Onofre. We've got big challenges. You've got 9 million people within 50 miles , including everybody listening to this. Probably you've got earthquake faults. And then of course , you've got rising sea levels and you have a strategically important military base , Camp Pendleton , right across the freeway. The last thing that should have been done decades ago was to to build the spent or build the San Onofre plant where it was built , and to host the spent fuel where it's being stored. And we now have an opportunity to to work with all stakeholders , work with the environmental community , work with industry , and work with the administration to try to chart a new path forward. And we've got legislation to do that.
S1: You know , just before the department put out this call , you'd written a letter to Department Secretary Chris Wright pushing for the establishment of a long term management program. Did you.
S2: And he and I have been working for some time on a plan to to get this out of the hands of the DOH , the Department of Energy. Jade is subject to political cycles and the desires of one energy secretary versus another. And I think it'll it'll take many years to solve this problem , to to come up with the right management plan for spent nuclear fuel. And I think we need an independent agency or independent , uh , a potential new corp , as it's being called a company , potentially. Those are those are things being discussed right now. What I know is that it cannot be done by the Department of Energy. They simply have too many , uh , too much politics associated with the Department of Energy. Depending on who the president is , you need to politicize this.
S1: And there's politics and there's perception , too , because , you know , concerns about radioactive and toxic nuclear waste have really slowed the development of nuclear power.
S2: That is not a good place to store spent nuclear fuel for many more decades. So we're going to do everything we can to get the waste out of there as quickly and as safely as we can. And this , too , is bipartisan. I actually have a bill with Darrell Issa that would prioritize the movement of spent nuclear fuel away from sites with those risky characteristics. The current laws it stands is the oldest waste gets moved the first. And I want to make sure that when there is a place for the waste at San Onofre specifically to go , that we're at or near the top of the line.
S1: You recently advanced over 100 million to address spent nuclear fuel across the country , including at San Onofre.
S2: And I think my friend , the chairman , a Republican named Chuck Fleischmann from Tennessee , we've been working together on this for for quite a while. The money would go for for a number of things. One would be that collaborative siting process that we're discussing , identifying those states that might be interested in continuing the development and commercial availability of the Atlas railcar system to safely transport spent nuclear fuel across the country , and also for continued research and development into other potential uses for spent nuclear fuel. The administration has a great deal of enthusiasm around recycling or reprocessing as it's known. There's both pros and cons to that , but I do think there is plenty of room for nuclear innovation. And ultimately , I hope that the 100 million , in addition to the 148 million we've been able to secure in the past seven years , will go a long way towards solving this problem in the years to come. Yeah.
S1: Yeah.
S2: And what we ultimately will need is to tap some of what's in the nuclear waste fund , which has been building up over many , many years to to try to even get the interest on on that money. It's roughly 40 billion , $50 billion and counting every day that goes by that this problem is not solved. There's an additional $2 million that taxpayers send to the nuclear waste fund. So ultimately , we're going to have to be able to tap some of that money , at least the interest on that money for the management of a new spent nuclear fuel program in the United States. And I am also looking very closely at what's being done in other countries in Finland , in Switzerland and in some other places where they have successfully used this collaborative process that I mentioned to you , and they have been able to select a permanent repository site. Finland just now is beginning to take the first canisters into their repository site. It has been done in other parts of the world. It can be done in the United States. We've just got to keep at it , and we've got to make sure that we continue to build on the progress that we've seen over the past few years.
S1:
S2: But the big next step is a bill that I've been working on for some time called the Nuclear Waste Administration Act , which would get spent nuclear fuel management out of the hands of the Department of Energy and into the hands of a single purpose entity that would be solely for the management of spent nuclear fuel , not subject to the political cycles , not subject to who the president is. But a long term , multi-decade plan is what we really need. And getting that bipartisan bill across the finish line is something I'm going to continue to work towards.
S1: I've been speaking with Mike Levin , congressman for California's 49th district. Mike , thank you very much for joining us.
S2: Thank you , as always , Jade.
S1: That's our show for today.
S3: I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
