The Trump administration is now 0-2 in its efforts to persuade Congress to fund the long-proposed, still-unrealized nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The Senate on Wednesday voted 92-5 in favor of the fiscal 2019 “minibus” appropriations bill covering the Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and other agencies. The House followed on Thursday with a 377-20 vote in favor of the $147.5 billion measure.
The bicameral consensus bill unveiled Monday would provide over $85 million for nuclear waste-related activities at DOE, but not a cent of that would be directed to licensing the disposal facility in Nye County, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
“Once again, I was able to stop funding for #YuccaMountain in the conference agreement the Senate just passed,” Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) tweeted Wednesday, shortly after the Senate vote.
Heller has made opposition to Yucca Mountain a cornerstone of his re-election campaign against Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.). Earlier in the week he declared that the “House of Representatives has failed in its relentless pursuit to turn #NV into our nation’s nuclear waste dump.”
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who has spearheaded efforts on Capitol Hill to push Yucca Mountain into reality, on Tuesday criticized an unidentified senator – clearly Heller — for standing in the way of the project. He also faulted outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for failing to defend the lower chamber’s proposed funding for licensing.
“I’m extremely disappointed that Speaker Ryan failed to stand strong on the House position, as well as the president’s position, on funding in the appropriations process,” Shimkus said in a statement to RadWaste Monitor. “Instead, as we’ve allowed for a decade now, a single senator’s short-term political calculations again triumphed over long-term, bipartisan policy priorities.”
Ryan’s office referred questions on the matter to House members of the conference committee that crafted the final budget bill. The top House energy and water appropriators on the panel, Reps. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), did not respond by deadline Friday to requests for comment. There was also no word from their Senate counterparts, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
Heller has frequently touted his success in blocking any legislation that would kick-start work on Yucca Mountain. In a press release earlier this week he emphasized his regular contacts with Alexander and Feinstein to persuade them against any funding for the project at DOE or the NRC.
It has also been widely accepted that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would not allow a vote in the higher chamber that could advance Yucca Mountain and potentially hurt Heller’s chances for re-election in November and the GOP majority as a whole.
The White House as of deadline Friday had not issued a statement of administration policy indicating whether President Donald Trump would sign or veto the legislation.
Another member of the appropriations conference committee, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), on Thursday briefly acknowledged the role the election played in setting funding for Yucca Mountain. He suggested it might have a better chance in future years.
“I am committed, and we need to be committed to ultimately getting some deal at Yucca. We need this facility, we need a place to put our waste, it’s got to be done,” he said during a speech at the National Cleanup Workshop in Alexandria, Va. “We’ve got to get Yucca done and we will get Yucca done, it’s just going to take more time.”
In a statement to RadWaste Monitor, Fleischmann said funding for the facility was lost in the horse-trading for the final appropriations bills.
Congress in 1987 first designated the Nye County property as the eventual site for disposal of tens of thousands of tons of high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations and spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. The George W. Bush administration Energy Department submitted its license application to the NRC in 2008, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later. The Trump administration has sought to revive the project in its fiscal 2018 and 2019 budget proposals.
For the budget year starting Oct. 1, the White House proposed nearly $170 million for licensing work at DOE and the NRC. The House minibus notched that up to about $270 million while the Senate offered no money for the project. As it did in the 2018 budget process, the Senate won the day on that line item.
The House and Senate have for years been at odds over the best means for the federal government to meet its legal mandate to build a permanent disposal site for the nation’s radioactive waste. Lawmakers in the lower chamber remain fixed on Yucca Mountain, while their colleagues down the hall have in recent years focused on interim storage.
“Some will say we lost this appropriations fight. But the real losers in this fight are taxpayers in all 50 states, and especially those in the 39 states where 121 communities continue to wait for a permanent, or even an interim, solution to this growing challenge,” Shimkus said. “I ask these communities not to give up hope. Next Congress, with a new Speaker and a new Appropriations Chairman, we will have another opportunity to do our job and put policy ahead of politics.”
The compromise legislation does provide $63.9 million for used nuclear fuel disposition research and development at DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. The program is intended to support transportation, storage, and ultimately disposal of spent fuel and other nuclear fuel cycle waste.
The department had requested just $10 million for “the highest priority research” within that program, including studying the performance of the high-burnup used fuel demonstration, testing of the cask and buffer railcars that would be used in transport of spent fuel to storage or disposal, and production of an escort car with the U.S. Navy.
Lawmakers also directed $22.5 million to DOE’s Integrated Waste Management System, without specific direction on use of the funds. The Energy Department had not asked for any money for the program, which it wanted to largely cancel while moving interim storage and transportation activities to the Yucca Mountain and Interim Storage line item.
The Integrated Waste Management System aligns with DOE’s plan for spent fuel and high-level waste management under the Obama administration: development of pilot storage facilities emphasizing first spent fuel from shuttered nuclear reactors, then interim storage sites, and finally one or more geologic repositories.
The proposed funding for the two line items corresponds to the amounts the Office of Nuclear Energy received in the current budget year. That money is being used for research and development on storage, transportation, and disposal of spent fuel, along with analyses for Integrated Waste Management systems. The Energy Department would determine how to use the fiscal 2019 funding only upon passage by Congress and signing by Trump.
Other Budgets
Elsewhere in the appropriations bill, Congress set the Nuclear Regulatory Commission budget for salaries and expenses at $898.4 million, nearly $60 million shy of the $958.1 million the agency requested. Revenue from NRC licensees and other sources would provide an anticipated $770.5 million, leaving Congress to appropriate $127.9 million.
The proposed funding amount matches the level set by the Senate in its energy and water appropriations bill. The House had recommended $953 million.
The main subtraction is the absence of nearly $48 million the NRC had requested for Yucca Mountain licensing work.
Within the top-line funding, the industry regulatory would receive $108.6 million for nuclear materials and waste safety operations and $25.4 million for decommissioning and low-level waste activities.
The conference bill meets the NRC’s request for $12.6 million for its Inspector General’s Office. Revenue sources would provide $10.4 million, leaving Congress to appropriate the rest.
An NRC spokesman said the agency could not comment on the spending plan.
The Army Corps of Engineers would receive $150 million for its Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). That is $30 million more than requested for the program to clean up sites contaminated by weapons and civilian energy programs managed by the Manhattan Engineer District and Atomic Energy Commission from the 1940s to the 1960s.
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent panel of experts for the Department of Energy, would receive $3.6 million.
