HENDERSON, Nev. — Congress appears set to again deny the Trump administration’s request to appropriate funding for licensing of a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., one issue watcher said Tuesday.
The White House for fiscal 2020 requested $116 million for Yucca Mountain and interim storage of radioactive waste, the large majority of that for licensing the Nevada disposal site.
“The House did not fund it and, from what we’ve heard, the Senate will not be funding that either,” Seth Kirshenberg, executive director of the Energy Communities Alliance, said during a panel discussion here at the ExchangeMonitor’s RadWaste Summit.
The House in June passed a “minibus” appropriations bill that included the spending legislation covering the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, respectively the applicant and licensor for the Yucca Mountain license. Rather than any money for Yucca Mountain, the bill includes $47.5 million for “integrated” management of nuclear waste, with about half of that funding work to advance consolidated interim storage of spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
The Senate has yet to issue any spending bills for the budget year that begins on Oct. 1. Congress will have just 13 business days to that date after it returns to Washington on Sept. 9. Kirshenberg, whose Washington, D.C.-based organization represents communities near DOE nuclear cleanup sites, said a continuing resolution that would keep the government running at current budget levels is expected through Dec. 6.
Queried by RadWaste Monitor, a spokesperson for Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) did not discuss the schedule for rolling out spending legislation that would cover nuclear waste management.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act put the Energy Department in charge of permanent disposal of what is now a geographically dispersed 100,000-metric ton stockpile of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste. The legislation was amended five years later to direct that the material be buried at Yucca Mountain, federal land about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
After years of study and about $15 billion spent, the George W. Bush DOE in 2008 filed its application to build and operate the repository with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later, eventually following the advice of a commission of experts and initiating a “consent-based” process for siting nuclear waste disposal. That process did not get far before President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The Trump administration has already failed to persuade Congress to restore funding for licensing in fiscal 2018 and 2019, but is taking another shot.
The then-Republican-led House supported the White House bids, and even added $100 million to the request for fiscal 2019. But it ran up against the Senate’s preference, led by Alexander and energy and water subcommittee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), to establish interim storage as the means for expediting removal of spent fuel from nuclear power plants in more than 30 states.
In the end, Congress settled on funding neither approach in recent budgets. Democrats then retoook the House majority in the November 2018 midterms.
Meanwhile, two corporate teams are seeking NRC licenses for consolidated interim storage facilities that could begin taking used fuel by the early 2020s.
Rollout of this year’s Senate spending bills was delayed while lawmakers negotiated a deal on the debt ceiling and budget cap. That finally happened in July.
Panelist Colin Jones, vice president and general manager for Jacobs’ North American Nuclear Group, said it is likely that Senate appropriations staff have bills ready to go. However, neither he nor Kirshenberg specified when they thought the legislation might be filed.
“The fact that they got the budget deal in place is just huge. We didn’t want to go into the start of the financial year wondering whether or not whether” there would be an appropriations bill, Jones said. “It significantly increases the chance that we will see an FY2020 energy and water approps bill.”
The pace at which the Senate energy and water bill advances to passage could depend on whether it is wrapped into a larger appropriations measure with other spending bills. The E&W bill would likely move quickly alongside defense spending legislation, Jones said. But being added to a minibus that also funds the Homeland Security Department would have the opposite effect if it gets caught up in the battle over funding the Trump administration wall along the border with Mexico, Jones said.
