Bill to create independent radwaste agency appears in Congress again

With less than a month of legislative work days remaining in the 118th Congress, lawmakers from California and Texas on Tuesday introduced a bill that would create a Nuclear Waste Administration.

Sponsored by a bipartisan pair whose districts contain or border large nuclear constituencies, it was the latest show of support for an old idea whose time, in more than a decade, has not come.

In a press release, Reps. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) and August Pfleuger (R-Texas) said they “introduced” the bill on Tuesday. Levin’s 49th California district includes the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Pfluger’s 11th Texas district is close to, but does not include, Andrews, Texas, home of Waste Control Specialists, which operates a low-level waste disposal facility and had sought to become an interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel.

It was not clear that the new Nuclear Waste Administration Act had been formally filed.

As of Thursday, the legislation had not received a bill number or appeared online at Congress.gov, the legislature’s official public bill-tracking system. Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), another San Diego-area congressman whose district is near San Onofre, is a cosponsor, Levin and Pfluger said.

“This bill will modernize our country’s nuclear waste policy by establishing an organization that solely focuses on managing U.S. nuclear waste, developing a consent-based siting process, and ensuring adequate funding for the program,” reads a bill summary jointly published Tuesday by Levin and Pfluger.

Though not an annual exercise, lawmakers have been filing the Nuclear Waste Administration Act in some form or another for many years. 

Bills by that name have appeared in Congress at least as far back as 2012, two years after the administration of President Barack Obama (D) effectively killed a permanent spent fuel repository authorized by Congress at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) sponsored the bill that time around.

The most recent incarnation of the Nuclear Waste Administration Act, before Levin and Pfluger’s, was supported by Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), then a Democrat burnishing his maverick, pro-energy credentials during big spending debates in Congress.

The Nuclear Waste Administration act has, over the years, attracted bipartisan interest, evidenced by a version filed in 2019 by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) with the support of Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). That bill was nearly identical to legislation introduced in two prior sessions of Congress. 

All of the prior versions of the Nuclear Waste Administration Act died in committee, if they even got a hearing.