What will it take for Maine Yankee’s nuclear waste to leave Wiscasset? It will take the federal government meeting the responsibility it took on around 1950 to get, somewhere in the country, high-level, permanent storage, U.S. Senator Angus King, I – Maine, said.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear energy office states at energy.gov/ne/articles/6-steps-doe-taking-address-spent-nuclear-fuel, published last September, new public feedback the office gathered will help inform the consent-based siting process. 

The prospect of a repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain “seems to be, if not dead, pretty close to dead,” and there has been talk of a possible site in Texas, King said in a recent phone interview with Wiscasset Newspaper. The paper wanted to catch up on the latest, if any, on the waste, with King, who serves on the Senate’s energy and natural resources committee; and ask how he helped get $1.3 million toward Wiscasset’s work on Old Ferry Road that leads to the former nuclear power plant.

As for the waste, King said he keeps raising the issue with the committee. A site would need to be geologically stable, “scientifically adequate and acceptable to the local people ...,” King said. Despite the jobs and money he said a project would yield, “the idea of siting a high level nuclear waste site in your state” is politically very hard, he said. 

So, King said, he did not know when the nuclear waste will be gone from Wiscasset. No ones knows, he added. “In the meantime, we’ve got to maintain access to the site.” That need, plus clammers and Molnlyke’s Wiscasset plant help make the Old Ferry Road repairs important, he said. “It’s an unusually crucial crossing,” and a costly project for the town to bear, he said. “So that got my attention and our attention to try to support this funding.”

In email responses to questions, Maine Yankee Spokesman Eric Howes said the funding, and Town Manager Dennis Simmons’ hope the work can get done this spring, are good news because “Old Ferry Road is the sole means of access to the Maine Yankee site and access is required 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Is Maine Yankee satisfied with King’s continued efforts on the energy committee, to get the waste removed? “Senator King and the entire Maine congressional delegation have been steadfast in their support of efforts to resolve the very difficult national issue of commercial spent nuclear fuel indefinitely stranded at Maine Yankee and the many other decommissioned nuclear reactor sites ... Senator Collins, Senator King and Congresswoman Pingree have over the many years tried to break the policy impasse on the spent nuclear fuel issue through legislation, hearings on Capitol Hill, letters, and otherwise urging action to finally address this issue.”

Howes added, Congressional staff interact regularly with Maine Yankee staff; get briefings and tours; and attend Maine Yankee Community Advisory Panel meetings.

In 2022, Maine Yankee paid Wiscasset $738,558.20 in property taxes, according to Howes.

Simmons, also responding to email questions, said he sees no progress being made on the spent fuel’s removal, and he gets an occasional call asking about the status of the facility.