US Navy says it met Idaho deadline on spent nuclear fuel

The U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program said Monday it has completed putting into dry storage all the spent fuel that was in water pool storage before Jan. 1, 2017. The project was finished 18 months ahead of a required schedule in a 2008 agreement with Idaho.

The agreement was an addendum to a much broader 1995 pact that Idaho reached with the U.S. Department of Energy following a series of lawsuits. The 1995 agreement is widely seen as preventing Idaho from becoming a nuclear waste dump.

The spent fuel processed by the Navy comes from ships, submarines and prototype reactor sites. Since 1957, the Navy has sent the fuel to its Naval Reactors Facility located at the Energy Department’s 890-square-mile (2,305-square-kilometer) site west of Idaho Falls.

The Energy Department site also includes the Idaho National Laboratory, a leading nuclear research lab.