A top official at the U.S. Department of Energy on Wednesday placed the onus squarely on Congress to provide the means for permanent disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste.
For now, that means the long-planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, as directed under the 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes said in testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources energy subcommittee.
Menezes said “he wished he knew the answer on how it is that we can do what Congress had directed the department to do some time ago, and that is to license Yucca Mountain.
“That is still the law. It’s a permanent repository, Congress made that clear,” the former Berkshire Hathaway executive said. “We only have had limited resources that we can pursue that. And so it’s really up to Congress and the appropriators to determine whether or not we have the resources to be able to develop that.”
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act made DOE responsible for disposal of a stockpile of tens of thousands of tons of used nuclear power plant fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The agency submitted its construction and operations license for Yucca Mountain to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008. The Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later, later embarking on a “consent-based” approach for siting waste disposal that made little progress before Donald Trump became president in January 2017.
The White House since then has twice asked Congress for money to resume licensing for Yucca Mountain and has been twice denied. The Trump administration is seeking about $116 million in the upcoming 2020 federal budget year. The House in June rejected that proposal, instead recommending $47.5 million for “integrated” waste management that would focus on preparing efforts to consolidate used fuel in a small number of temporary storage sites. The Senate Appropriations Committee bill covering nuclear waste management should be released today.
The DOE official was responding to comments from Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) during a hearing on the Nuclear Energy Renewal Act and eight other energy-related bills.
