Despite another burst of activity in Congress, it could be years or even decades more before the United States settles on a final strategy for disposal of its growing stockpile of nuclear waste, according to issue watchers.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are in 2019 again debating whether to restart the frozen licensing for the planned geologic repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., along with various bills that could advance or derail the project.
This has become an annual tradition in Washington. But this year Democrats have retaken control of the House and do not appear inclined to offer any funding for the Nevada facility. Meanwhile, candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2020 are lining up to oppose Yucca Mountain as their campaigns roll through the state.
Critics say it is past time to give up on Yucca Mountain as a workable solution to the nuclear waste impasse. Supporters of the approach say even skeptics will inevitably accept that the isolated patch of federally owned desert is the best place to bury tens of thousands of tons of radioactive material. In conversations with RadWaste Monitor, those on both sides of the question appeared to accept that the solution will not arrive immediately.
“It’s not like if we don’t do it now, is that going to change the science next year or in the next decade? No. It’s been safe in the past, it’s safe now, it’ll be safe in the future,” Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), perhaps Congress’ most ardent supporter for the project, said in an interview. “Eventually, folks will come to the conclusion that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We’ve got a site, we’ve got proven science, we should move forward.”
As more nuclear power plants retire in congressional districts throughout the nation, but the owners remain stuck with radioactive spent fuel from their reactors, political impetus will grow for action in Washington, said Ward Sproat, who as head of the Energy Department’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management in 2008 filed the license application for the repository with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But Sproat could not offer a forecast for that pressure to reach a tipping point.
Another source concurred that political pressure will increase, but called Yucca Mountain “truly dead.” However, the current deadlock in Washington is so dire that the source suggested a “time out” for a couple decades before Congress is finally ready to take action.
Delayed progress would be in keeping with history.
Congress in 1982 assigned the Energy Department responsibility for disposal of U.S. spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations – starting no later than Jan. 31, 1998. The spent fuel alone, now in the neighborhood of 80,000 metric tons and growing at a rate of 2,000 tons annually, remains at 121 sites in 39 states, Shimkus said. (A new paper from the Congressional Research Service cites 80 locations, encompassing active nuclear commercial nuclear facilities, retired facilities, and DOE-owned or managed properties.)
In the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Congress envisioned Yucca Mountain as one of two potential locations for nuclear waste repositories, though the second site was never selected. Five years later, lawmakers amended the legislation to narrow the choices to the federal property 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Twenty-one years later, the Energy Department filed its application at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The project’s backers say $15 billion in federally funded research and development has proven conclusively that the location is safe. Its detractors say there is no way to make a seismically active area atop an aquifer safe for material that will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years.
Nevada from the start objected to becoming home to other states’ radioactive waste, particularly as it has no nuclear program of its own. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) proved particularly successful in curbing the project’s advancement, Sproat said: Never eliminating funding entirely, but slicing it deep enough that there was funding for the licensing proceeding but little for other activities such as figuring out the means for transporting the waste.
Reid found an ally in President Barack Obama, whose administration defunded the licensing in 2010 and then, on recommendation of a blue-ribbon commission of experts, initiated an all-new waste disposal siting method that would emphasize consent from local and state governments.
That effort did not get far beyond a draft plan before President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017. At that point, backers of the Yucca Mountain approach thought they had an opening to make it reality, with Reid retired and Trump ready to shift gears again.
And that window did open: The White House, for the last three budget cycles, has requested funding for the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume licensing. The House supported the first two requests, while the Senate sought funding to establish interim storage options in hopes of expediting the relocation of waste away from the points of generation. In the end the difference led to zero funding for either method.
A number of bills on nuclear waste management came and went, some with the intention of driving Yucca Mountain forward and some that would effectively have started the siting process over by demanding local approval for any selected location. None became law, though Shimkus’ pro-Yucca 2017 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act got the farthest – passed out of the House last year on a strong 340-72 bipartisan vote only to founder in the Senate.
That bill provides the “recipe for bipartisan agreement on nuclear waste policy matters that includes disposal,” according to Katrina McMurrian, executive director of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition. She said that solution points to Yucca Mountain; but, like others, McMurrian could not offer any definitive timeline for resolution.
The choke point to any bill that would promote Yucca Mountain in the last Congress was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), observers said. Specifically, McConnell was widely believed to oppose any measure he thought would endanger then-Sen. Dean Heller’s (R-Nev.) chances for re-election. That wasn’t enough, and then-Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) defeated Heller in the November general election.
Resolving that electoral issue, to date at least, does not appear to have created a fresh opportunity for Yucca Mountain.
The Democrat-led House Appropriations Committee in May approved an energy and water development bill that would provide nearly $50 million for integrated management of nuclear waste, with a focus on consolidated interim storage. That left nothing for Yucca Mountain, though Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) fell just a few votes shy for approval of an amendment that would have given $74 million for licensing.
The Senate version of the bill has not yet appeared. In recent years, the upper chamber has proposed funding interim storage rather than licensing of the permanent repository.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) chair of the Senate Appropriations energy and water committee that will produce the first draft of the bill, has said repeatedly in recent months he wants an up or down vote this year on whether to proceed with Yucca Mountain. A proponent of interim storage in recent years – though he opposed potential “monitored retrievable storage” in Tennessee while he was the state’s governor in the 1980s – Alexander did not offer for this article his thoughts on the permanent disposition of the waste.
Many of the nuclear waste bills from the last Congress have reappeared in 2019, with minimal changes, including an updated version of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act now led by Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.). So far they have not gotten farther than being assigned to committees.
Those bills will have to compete with high-profile priorities including healthcare, immigration, and the economy, one industry source said: “While I’m hopeful, I’m not optimistic. You’re always operating in a world of competing priorities.”
Sproat said the priority placed on nuclear waste disposal is likely to increase in coming years as more power plants close. Seven reactor sites have closed since 2013 – the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts just last week. More retirements have been announced.
“Once members realize that, and then realize that Congress has already made big strides to identify locations and then do the scientific study, I think that they become very sympathetic to the need to finish what we started,” Shimkus said.
Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko agreed, though for him the persistent focus on Yucca Mountain is not a positive. “I just don’t see anything” for the site, said Jaczko, who prior to his NRC tenure was a staffer for Reid. “People will continue to push this issue because they just can’t let go.”
The increasing political pressure to do something about the waste has already been illustrated in California, where members of Congress have become increasingly attuned to the spent fuel stored near the ocean at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in San Diego County, according to Sproat.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, has regularly raised the issue on budget hearings for the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She is one of the sponsors, along with Alexander and two colleagues, on 2019 legislation already introduced twice in the last decade to establish a multistage, consent-based program for nuclear waste storage and disposal.
The 2019 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, led by McNerney, features new language prioritizing removal of spent fuel from retired nuclear plants near large bodies of water in seismically active areas. That would all apply to SONGS, as would language in a new spent fuel-relocation bill from Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), whose district covers the plant.
“You’re getting not only a higher level of awareness of the issue of stranded nuclear fuel at the local level, but that awareness is getting pushed to the legislative branch, to the senators and the congressmen who are now saying, you know what, we need to do something about this because it’s now affecting my state and my constituents,” Sproat said.
The federal government collected billions of dollars from reactor owners to pay for the repository, and has paid out about $7.4 billion to those companies in settlements and court judgments for failing to meet its legal obligation to take their spent fuel. As many have before him, Simpson noted during the debate over the energy and water bill that the federal liability is $2 million per day.
“Perhaps the biggest missing ingredient for a measure that could pass both chambers of Congress and be signed by the President is accountability,” said McMurrian, head of a coalition of nuclear power companies and state public utility agencies. “Congressional leaders can get away with voting against the best interest of their states if constituents do not hold them accountable, and I’m afraid that most electric customers and taxpayers have little or no idea about how much the government’s inaction is costing them.”
Still, the industry source said that, on an operational and safety level, “This is not an urgent issue that has to be fixed today.”
Two corporate teams hope within a matter of years to open storage facilities in Texas and New Mexico that could centralize the used fuel until the final disposal site is ready. Communities and states are less likely to support a nearby interim site if there is suspicion it will become permanent, Shimkus said: “I think it’s pollyana-ish that what gets us across the finish line is an interim-only solution.”
The political resolution to this question is unclear. While McConnell might not see any reason now to oppose Yucca Mountain, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) must look out for any vulnerable Democrats from Nevada, one source said. Pelosi has been reported to have committed to blocking the project. The Trump administration has not shown the resolve the push the issue.
Should a Democrat defeat Trump in 2020, the next president could again reverse course against Yucca Mountain. Among the 20-something candidates, Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee and others, have already said they believe Yucca Mountain is unworkable.
They have not said, though, what would replace that site, according to Sproat.
Supporting Yucca Mountain is not the kiss of death for winning the vote in Nevada, the industry source said. He noted that George W. Bush won the state in the 2004 presidential election even after signing legislation two years earlier approving Yucca Mountain as the location for the repository.
Politics are not the only obstacle. The Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission would also have to re-establish the teams of experts for the license adjudications after a decade.
Nevada has estimated it would spend another $50 million to support its contentions during the NRC adjudication. The process would take four to five years, costing the Energy Department over $1.6 billion and the NRC $330 million.
Nevada’s congressional delegation, among many others, is demanding a disposal selection process based on consent from local and state communities. They point to the recommendations from the Obama administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. That panel, including Ernest Moniz before he became energy secretary, laid out an approach in which communities would be encouraged to volunteer as host sites even as the federal government approached jurisdictions in locations believed to be appropriate for waste disposal.
The industry source questioned the fiscal viability of consent-based siting, calling it “a romantic notion that senators can hide behind.” The federal government is unlikely to pay billions of dollars to research each potential location, the source indicated.
Another source said consent must be at the heart of any selection process, but acknowledged the difficulty in determining the boundaries of what that consent would specifically involve.
