Appropriators in the House of Representatives are to blame for the failure to schedule a floor vote on legislation aimed at pushing forward development of the long-delayed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) said Tuesday.
Rep. John Shimkus’ (R-Ill.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017 passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last June on a strongly bipartisan 49-4 vote. But it remains unknown when the bill will get an up or down vote by the full House membership.
Construction of the controversial underground repository would be paid for by the Nuclear Waste Fund, which over three decades collected more than $30 billion from nuclear utilities before DOE suspended fees in 2014 under federal court order.
The Shimkus bill “hasn’t gone to the floor because the appropriators have in their infinite wisdom spent the $35 billion that was deposited in the waste fund for other purposes,” Barton said during an Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee hearing on U.S. nuclear infrastructure. “That may or may not have been a good thing to do at the time, but the fact remains that the bill that passed out of this committee is a permanent long-term solution, bipartisan, and we’re now at an impasse with the appropriators because they claim they don’t have any money to fund high-level waste disposal and don’t want to agree to a long-term funding profile.”
Barton’s office did not respond to a request for additional comment regarding his complaint.
Shimkus, who serves on the subcommittee, did not discuss Yucca Mountain during Tuesday’s hearing, and his office did not respond to a request for comment. There was also no word by deadline from the House Appropriations Committee regarding Barton’s statement.
Even if the bill escapes the House, its chances in the Senate remain questionable. The upper chamber has generally been more skeptical of Yucca Mountain, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is widely believed to oppose allowing a vote on the bill if it could hurt the re-election chances for Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.).
In its 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Congress gave the Department of Energy until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin accepting radioactive waste for permanent disposal. Five years later, lawmakers designated Yucca Mountain as the sole site to be considered to hold the spent commercial reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste now spread across the country. Nonetheless, the repository remains unlicensed and unbuilt.
The 1982 law also established the Nuclear Waste Fund, and nuclear utility ratepayers had by last year paid out over $40 billion for siting, building, and operation of the permanent repository. However, accounting rules at the Congress Budget Office have essentially directed that money to separate federal programs, according to a November 2017 explainer on the Shimkus bill from the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Under CBO rules, fee revenue was designated as “mandatory” receipts and directed to deficit reduction on a yearly basis, the panel said.
“But spending on nuclear waste programs is subject to annual appropriation, therefore is classified as ‘discretionary’ spending. Discretionary spending is subject to annual budget caps and only scored the year in which money is spent,” according to the document. “Because spending was classified as discretionary outlays, each dollar that was spent on nuclear waste management counted against the budget cap and directly competed with other federal programs.”
The Shimkus bill features a number of measures intended to reform the Nuclear Waste Fund and push forward efforts for interim and permanent storage of U.S. nuclear waste. Among its measures, H.R. 3053 would prevent the federal government from collecting fees for the fund until there is a final ruling on licensing Yucca Mountain. It would also designate some already collected funding for use by DOE for specific work at Yucca Mountain during specific time frames.
Barton, who announced in November he would not seek re-election this year, said during the hearing he hoped the Yucca Mountain facility would be funded before he leaves office. He urged Ed McGinnis, DOE principal deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy, to press the department and Trump administration to deliver a funding solution on Yucca Mountain so the Shimkus bill can advance.
McGinnis said DOE “would do our very best.” He noted the department asked for $120 million in the current budget year to resume the licensing process for Yucca Mountain and initiate a program for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel at a small number of sites until the permanent repository is ready.
The House approved the funding request, along with $30 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart its review of the DOE license application. However, Senate appropriators zeroed out all that funding in their own energy bill for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Congress has yet to pass a full budget for the year, relying instead on a series of short-term measure that provide nothing for Yucca Mountain.
The White House is scheduled Monday to roll out its fiscal 2019 budget proposal. There has been no official word on possible funding for Yucca Mountain, but one industry official last week said common wisdom was that the ask would be similar to what the administration sought in its prior budget plan.
The Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing focused largely on new opportunities in nuclear power, rather than on the waste produced by the industry to date. But the back end of the fuel cycle clearly remains on people’s minds.
In an editorial published Tuesday, Shimkus drew attention to the federal government’s increasing liability for failing to take title to U.S. spent fuel. The United States has already paid more than $6 billion to nuclear utilities stuck with the power-plant waste, and the payouts are expected to increase into the tens of billions.
“The House approved the Trump Administration’s $150 million request in our FY18 appropriations,” Shimkus wrote. “The Senate ought to do the same. It’s long past time ratepayers and taxpayers stopped paying billions for nothing and started seeing some progress.”
