Appropriators in the House of Representatives are to blame for the inability to schedule a floor vote on legislation aimed at pushing forward development of the 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 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.”
Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain as the sole site to be considered for permanent underground storage of spent commercial reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste, but the repository remains unlicensed and unbuilt. The Shimkus bill features a number of measures to break that impasse, including giving the Energy Department crucial land and water rights.
Barton, who announced in November he would not seek re-election this year, said he hoped Yucca Mountain 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 move forward with Yucca Mountain and interim storage of spent reactor fuel.
