The Center for Public Integrity

The Department of Energy is responsible for managing almost 13,000 metric tons of nuclear waste at sites in Colorado, Idaho, New York, South Carolina and Washington. For the past three decades, DOE planned to permanently dispose nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, a geological repository in southwest Nevada. The cancellation of the project by the Obama administration in 2009 has left the department scrambling to come up with alternatives.

Since 1983, DOE has spent $14 billion to research potential sites, develop technical documents and apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license for the Yucca Mountain repository, which was slated to open in 2020. When the administration decided to terminate the Yucca Mountain program and proposed cutting its funding, DOE tried to withdraw its license application from NRC. The commission declined to do so. As a result, the status of the Yucca Mountain program is still in limbo, but the DOE and Navy do not have backup plans in place for a different location the nuclear waster could be stored.

“The decision to forgo Yucca Mountain leaves DOE without a pathway to permanently dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. In the absence of a repository at Yucca Mountain, some affected states and communities are concerned that DOE may store waste at its sites indefinitely,” the Government Accountability Office said in its report on the Yucca Mountain shutdown.

The Navy also stores spent nuclear fuel from submarines and aircraft carriers at the Idaho site. The agreements with Colorado and Idaho both specify a date when the DOE and Navy must remove the nuclear waste from these locations. The federal government may be liable to pay Idaho $60,000 and Colorado $15,000 for each day past January 1, 2035, that DOE and the Navy have not removed nuclear waste. Over a year, these fees total $27.4 million.

Big coal is hardly in retrenchment mode. Four of the nation’s five biggest coal companies saw sales rise in 2010, even as the Obama administration blocks expansion of coal mines and focuses on greener energy.

Most of the 1 billion tons of coal produced every year is used to generate electricity in the United States, said Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, a trade group. Growth in production from 2009 to 2010 is attributed to an improving economy, which creates greater demand for electricity — and, therefore, coal.

 “Coal is a critical component of America’s comprehensive energy portfolio,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said March 22 when announcing the opening of acreage in Wyoming to new mining.

Even so, the coal industry says it is concerned about the criticism of coal and efforts by the administration to block its expansion.The Environmental Protection Agency, Raulston said, has not allowed new mines to be built or old ones to be expanded since Obama took office in 2009. The industry has sued the EPA over about 200 permits that have been held up.

 “There is still active mining going on, but it’s very hard to expand a mine,” she said, adding that proposed greenhouse gas regulations and other rules have the industry worried.

President Obama regularly sings the praises of cleaner alternative forms of energy and electric cars, sometimes offending groups such as the National Mining Association, which says the president has “overlooked coal’s potential.” Meanwhile, Obama has underscored a place for “clean coal.”

Such mixed messages from the White House took fresh form in recent days.

A utility company has challenged a state's sovereignty over nuclear power plants within its borders, in a case whose eventual outcome could ripple across the nation.