There are some new rays of hope that Maine Yankee's spent fuel will leave Wiscasset.

But with Congress holding the purse strings, those watching the situation closely expect the waste to still be sitting here for many more years.

Removal could be decades away, even mid-century.

“I plan on being dead then,” said Don Hudson, new chairman of Maine Yankee's Community Advisory Panel.

The discussion came at the panel's yearly meeting, September 26 at the Taste of Maine in Woolwich.

Among new developments the panel reviewed, some communities in the United States are interested in taking spent fuel from nuclear plants; a Nevada disposal site the federal government had eyed is back on the table; and, if a proposed pilot project flies with Congress, closed plants like Maine Yankee would be first in line to have fuel taken away until a permanent site is found.

Right now, Maine Yankee's waste sits in above-ground casks on the Bailey Point peninsula. The federal government has yet to decide where to take that waste and the spent fuel from other nuclear plants.

On August 13, a court ordered the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to get back to reviewing Yucca Mountain, Nev., as a possible permanent waste site. But the commission will need more money from Congress to finish that review of the Department of Energy's application, Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes said.

The $11 million the commission still has from prior funding will not be enough, Howes said.

In a late development that Howes reported at the meeting, Nevada on September 26 filed a petition challenging the new court ruling. “Whether the court will take this up is unknown,” Howes said.

On another front, support is building for a pilot project to get the waste out of Wiscasset and other sites of closed nuclear plants. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, along with some regulatory and industry groups, backed the concept at a senate committee hearing July 30.

If Congress moves quickly on the pilot project, there could be a place for Maine Yankee's waste to go as soon as 2021, according to information the panel reviewed.

However, the House and Senate do not appear close to agreement on either the pilot project or the funding for the Yucca Mountain review, Howes said.

“It's just really difficult to see how that's going to happen,” he said about the 2021 date.

While Nevada may not want the nation's nuclear waste, Carlsbad, N.M., and some other communities are considering it for its economic development potential.

“It's jobs,” former panel chairman Marge Kilkelly said.

The Dresden woman is Sen. Angus King's (I-Maine) senior policy advisor. Communities' interest in taking the waste is an exciting prospect, Kilkelly said.

Meanwhile, a federal license for the storage system Maine Yankee and other plants use runs out in 2020. NAC International, the company that holds the license, is working on renewing it, Maine Yankee officials said.

Also at the September 26 meeting, members voted to keep the panel going another two years. Maine Yankee created it in 1997 to keep the public informed on issues surrounding the plant's decommissioning. Since then the panel has moved on to storage and removal issues, including efforts to get the federal government to take the waste away.

“The job is not yet done,” Hudson said. “We don't have the same level of work we did 15 years ago. But I think it's still something of importance, to keep a voice on the Midcoast,” he said.

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or susanjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com