In addition to waste from generation of electricity, waste from defense activities requires safe storage and disposal. Meeting long-term nuclear waste management needs is essential to ensuring that nuclear power continues to power the nation in a safe, sustainable, and responsible way.

While it is safe and secure in these locations, a long-term solution is needed to ensure that the public and environment continue to be protected. Spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors is currently stored on-site at nuclear power plants around the country. It remains the United StatesвЂ™ single largest contributor (more than 60 percent) of non-greenhouse-gas-emitting electric power generation. Nuclear power is a critical part of our nationвЂ™s energy mix, and has reliably provided almost 20 percent of electrical generation in the U.S. We will be developing a detailed plan for this process in the coming year, and we need your help. What is a consent-based siting process, and why is it needed? In short, it is a way to ensure that communities, tribes and states, as partners, are comfortable with the location of future storage and disposal facilities before they are constructed. TodayвЂ™s step forward follows Secretary MonizвЂ™s announcement in March 2015 that DOE would move forward with the development of a separate repository for defense waste. The launch of our consent-based siting initiative represents an important step toward addressing this nuclear waste management challenge, so that we can continue to benefit from nuclear technologies. Today, the Department of EnergyВ is taking a critical step toward the development of a consent-based approach to siting future nuclear waste management facilities as part of a strategy for the long-term storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

The long dark fuel