Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) is reviving legislation aimed at moving the federal government closer to resolving the decades-long impasse over disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste.
The discussion draft of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 is nearly identical to the same-named bill introduced in the last Congress by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). That legislation garnered strong support as it advanced through the House, but never received a hearing or a vote in the Senate.
The draft bill contains a set of amendments to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act intended to strengthen the federal government’s ability to develop the geologic repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, along with at least one consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel.
Measures include: authorizing the secretary of energy to enter into an agreement with a private entity for siting, construction, and operation of one or more “monitored retrievable storage” facility for nuclear waste; permanently withdrawing 147,000 acres of federal land in Nye County, Nev., for the Yucca project and transferring authority from the Interior Department to the Energy Department; and requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider construction authorization for the repository within 30 months after the bill is enacted.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Barrasso, has scheduled a May 1 hearing on the legislation.
Shimkus lauded the Barrasso bill and said corresponding legislation is anticipated in the House, while Nevada lawmakers quickly went on the attack. “We strongly oppose any effort to restart Yucca Mountain and call on our colleagues in the Senate to do the same,” Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto (both D-Nev.) said in a joint statement.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave DOE until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin moving spent reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste from their points of generation to permanent disposal. Five years later, Congress mandated that the waste go into the Yucca Mountain repository, roughly 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department filed its license application for Yucca with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, but the proceeding has been largely moribund after being defunded two years later by the Obama administration. Congress has twice rejected Trump administration proposals to fund resumption of licensing, but the White House is again seeking funding for the upcoming fiscal 2020.
