Failure to provide funding for the Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada signals a lack of leadership in Congress and at the White House toward finally resolving the decades-long impasse over disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste, Representative Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said during a budget markup Monday.
The House Appropriations Committee voted 30-21 in favor of its $49.6 billion energy and water bill for fiscal 2021. The measure now waits on action by the full House.
Within the $41 billion designated in the legislation for the Department of Energy is $27.5 million that meets the Trump administration’s request for an Interim Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight program for the budget year starting Oct. 1. This is the first budget cycle in which the Trump administration has not requested appropriations to end the decade-long freeze on the review of the DOE license application for Yucca Mountain at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“I’ve already voiced my profound disappointment in the administration’s decision to not include funding for Yucca Mountain in their budget request. I went to the White House after they made this, in my opinion, ill-advised decision to forgo funding in the upcoming fiscal year and told them this issue was too important to play politics with,” Newhouse said prior to the committee vote. He noted that federal law requires Yucca Mountain be built.
The third-term lawmaker’s central Washington congressional district encompasses the Energy Department’s Hanford Site, which holds high-level waste that would be sent to the Nevada disposal facility. The Appropriations Committee must also accept blame for failing to move Yucca Mountain forward, he said: “This matter isn’t just in the hands of the White House, though, and the Department of Energy. It is in our hands as well. The bill before us today fails to do its job. We, then are failing to do our jobs.”
House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairwoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) countered that the energy bill is a step in the right direction, rather than relitigating Yucca Mountain.
“In fact, for the first time, this bill provides $20 million for interim storage activities, added to $25 million in research accounts that have been accruing over the years, to try to help us envision how to find alternatives that would actually work,” Kaptur said. “We’ve directed the Department of Energy to begin siting work for a federal interim storage facility using a consent-based approach.”
