Congress should fund the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada this year as part of a broader nuclear waste management approach, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), now officially the Department of Energy’s head Senate appropriator in the 116th Congress, said Wednesday.
“This year, we should resolve the more than 30 year stalemate over how to dispose of used nuclear fuel. I support proceeding on all fronts: funding Yucca Mountain, as well as storing used nuclear fuel at interim storage sites and at private facilities,” Alexander said on Twitter after his GOP colleagues re-elected him chair of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee for the new Congress.
Democrats again installed Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) as the subcommittee’s ranking member. For the full committee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is chairman and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is ranking member.
The energy and water development subcommittee writes the initial Senate appropriations bills that fund DOE, including the Office of Nuclear Energy that would oversee the Donald Trump administration’s struggling effort to restart licensing Yucca Mountain as a permanent waste repository. The panel also funds the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would grant the license.
Alexander has held the subcommittee leadership position since 2015. This will be his last term in the role, as he announced in December he would not seek re-election in 2020.
The panel’s potential plans for funding nuclear waste activities at DOE and the NRC remained under wraps this week. The Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission are scheduled to roll out their fiscal 2020 budget proposals next month, but they have not yet said publicly how much they will request for those programs.
Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the eventual disposal site for what is now around 100,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations and spent reactor fuel from commercial power plants. That waste now primarily remains on-site at the point of generation, with about 2,100 metric tons of used fuel sitting in Tennessee as of the end of 2017, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
The Department of Energy submitted its license application to the NRC in 2008, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later. The Trump administration failed to persuade Congress in the last two budget cycles to restore funding for licensing, but issue observers expect it will try again for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.
Alexander did not go to bat for Yucca Mountain in the 115th Congress, as the subcommittee provided no part of the nearly $170 million DOE and the NRC sought to resume licensing. While the House went above and beyond in recommending about $270 million for that purpose, it ultimately accepted zero as a fair number in bicameral budget negotiations. President Donald Trump in September signed the bill funding the NRC and DOE.
The Alexander-Feinstein subcommittee last year did not get the up to $10 million it wanted for DOE to contract with a private provider for consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel.
Alexander has for years emphasized interim storage as a faster means for the Energy Department to meet its legal obligation under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to remove spent fuel from power plants. The agency is now nearly 21 years past the Jan. 31, 1998, deadline to begin taking the waste.
The lawmaker in 2013 and 2015 co-sponsored legislation intended to advance both interim storage and permanent disposal of spent fuel, including by directing DOE to build a pilot storage facility. Neither bill made it out of committee. Alexander has said publicly in recent years he would reintroduce similar legislation, but to date has not done so.
“[T]he quickest, and probably the least expensive, way for the federal government to start to meet its used nuclear fuel obligations is for the Department of Energy to contract with a private storage facility for used nuclear fuel,” the lawmaker said in 2017.
The NRC is currently reviewing two license applications from two separate commercial teams to build and operate interim spent fuel storage sites in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.
Should appropriators in both chambers of Congress move toward funding for licensing Yucca Mountain, they are sure to face stiff, continued resistance from Nevada’s congressional delegation. Nevada elected officials at the state and federal levels remain uniformly opposed to importing other states’ radioactive waste.
Part of the reason the Yucca funding effort is believed to have failed in the last Congress was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) desire to avoid undermining the 2018 re-election chances of Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.). Then-Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) nonetheless unseated Heller in the November midterm elections.
While that might have removed one political obstacle to approving funding for the repository, lawmakers from the Silver State have in recent weeks reminded their colleagues that their opposition remains undimmed.
“I’m pleased that our entire delegation is united in opposition to the disastrous Yucca Mountain proposal, and I’m glad leadership is taking this seriously,” newly elected Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) tweeted this week.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal quoted Lee as saying her support for electing Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as new House speaker was predicated on agreement to block Yucca Mountain.
However, resolutely pro-Yucca Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) indicated this week the fight was not over, but would be focused in the Senate, the Nevada Independent reported Friday.
“It’s worth noting what the money that anti-Yucca folks oppose is actually for,” Shimkus spokesman Jordan Haverly tweeted Friday. “It’s not to build the repository, it’s to have the science heard and contested before a panel of judges” in the NRC adjudication for the license application.
