Where many leaders in Nevada see only risk when it comes to the long-planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, Nye County Board of Commissioners Chairman Dan Schinhofen sees opportunity.
Nye County is the poorest county in Nevada, with a median income more than $10,000 less than the statewide median, according to reporting earlier this year. Schinhofen believes the jobs and infrastructure improvements delivered by the geologic repository to be built in the county could help change that.
“The jobs it brings, and then that multiplier effect of those people living here, eating here, that money turning over in our economy would be huge for us,” he said during telephone interview earlier this month.
Thirty years ago, Congress amended the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to designate the mountain toward the southern end of Nye County as the storage location for the nation’s growing stockpile of high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. The project has been controversial from the start, and has advanced haltingly under successive presidential administrations.
The Obama administration stopped all work on Yucca Mountain, but the Trump administration has requested funding for fiscal 2018 to resume the licensing process at both the Department of Energy (the applicant) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the licensor). The House of Representatives has supported the request, and is also considering legislation from Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) aimed at paving the way for Yucca Mountain. The Senate has so far zeroed out funding for the project in its latest energy budget.
Nevada’s congressional delegation, and leaders at the state level, almost uniformly oppose bringing tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste from around the country into the Silver State, worried about the potential danger to its residents and environment. They have pledged to oppose reviving Yucca Mountain at every opportunity.
Schinhofen, though, called on lawmakers to follow the law on Yucca Mountain as set out by Congress in 1987, and to focus on what science says about the safety of the site for storage of nuclear waste. He spoke to RadWaste Monitor ahead of his appearance at the ExchangeMonitor’s RadWaste Summit, being held Sept. 5-7 at the JW Marriott resort in Summerlin, Nev.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
There’s no doubt where the Nevada state government and congressional delegation stand on Yucca Mountain. What would you say is your position or the position of the Nye County Board of Commissioners?
I can only speak on behalf of the board, and that’s what I intend to do always. The board’s position has been for, gosh, 30 years: follow the law, follow the science. If it’s proven to be safe we would be happy to host the repository provided there’s proper mitigation.
We’re not alone in that. Nine of 17 Nevada counties have called to have the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] hearings, in resolutions dating back four years, I believe it was, just about the same time that Harry Reid was able to abrogate the law and get it defunded.
So our position is: Let’s follow the rule of law, let’s see what the guys who are tasked with it, the NRC, have to say. We already know what the national labs have to say, they reviewed the SERs [safety evaluation reports]; we know what the staff of the NRC has to say, they reviewed all the SERs. The only two issues they found were water and land, and those two were fairly easy to overcome.
Land is just land transfer between federal agencies, and water is the state engineer … won’t call it a beneficial use, although they do allow water for Area 5, which hosts U-233, 35, and other material as hot as anything going into Yucca Mountain.
How do you try to convey your message to the state?
We have tried many times in many forums to convey that message to the state. They are not receptive at all. They have been led by former Senator Reid, former Senator and Governor [Richard] Bryan, to not just say no but hell no, stick their fingers in their ears.
They won’t brook any arguments, any dissent. They have a nuclear waste [agency], it’s called the Office of Nuclear Projects, the committee that they’ve funded for years, and you cannot be on that board if you are pro-Yucca or even open to the idea. I know that because one of my former commissioners, in 2007, she was appointed to that board and two weeks later they asked her to resign. It should be called the Office to Stop Any Nuclear Projects.
The state hasn’t been receptive. I’m disappointed that they seem to prefer political science over nuclear science, and unfortunately for them, the last poll in the Review-Journal, the paper of note for Nevada, had 55 percent in favor of moving forward with the hearings and Yucca Mountain. But they still say nobody wants it. So unless you live in Clark County you’re nobody, I guess.
In your op-ed in April you called for the science to be heard on Yucca Mountain. What do you believe will happen there?
I have a lot of hope. The House passed funding for it on a large bipartisan majority. Harry Reid always said it was a Republican issue, it’s not. The president and his budget put money in. The DOE, the current secretary has said it’s a necessity, and just the other day the NRC is getting its information systems up and running.
The only thing left is the Senate: Do you have an up or down vote, are you going to follow the law, and have the hearings? The easiest way to get that done is for our governor and our federal delegation to say, yes, we believe it’s not safe but we want to follow the law and let’s have the hearings.
The Senate had to pull the funding out of their bill and now it’s gonna go to conference. If they don’t want the law, then vote the law out.
When Harry Reid was in office, and Republicans were trying to defund the Affordable Care Act, Reid’s comment was “It’s the law, get over it,” and I wrote a letter to him saying the same thing: “It’s the law, get over it,” let’s move forward.
So I have hope that sane, reasonable people will look at it and allow the science to be vetted by the NRC, as called for in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
What sort of input should the county have in the decision-making on Yucca Mountain?
We’ve been partners in this all the way along. We’ve done a lot of water modeling and test holes to find out where the water actually flows from, and how it flows out from that area. We want to work closely with it because we are the most affected unit of local government, we are the host country, just like we host Area 5 and the closed nuclear dump outside of Beatty. So we hope to continue to work closely with them and have our voices heard since we will be the most affected.
When you say work with them, is that DOE, Congress, other stakeholders?
All of the above. We’ve been open for discussions all the way along. The state, through their representative, [Robert Halstead, executive director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects], has said a few times in public forums that he welcomes the opportunity to have the license hearings resumed so they can present their 218 contentions, and we’re happy to do that, we think that’s what they should do.
The way to get it funded, again, is the state to quit throwing up every roadblock they can and say we don’t think it’s safe and we’re going to prove it. So let’s do that.
My four grandchildren are growing up here in Pahrump, my three children own homes here in Pahrump, the biggest town closest to [Yucca Mountain]. We want to be sure it’s safe, I’m not going to do anything to put my grandchildren at risk. We have a duty to our citizens to make sure it’s as safe as it can be.
What are the potential benefits, and the potential risks, for Nye County if the Yucca Mountain project goes forward?
Let’s go to risk first. We already have two dumps. We hope this will be a real repository where they can reprocess and recycle in the future.
We get 1,500 trucks a year coming through our town and our county to Area 5. There’s always risk in handling the material, but none of the material transported around the country has ever been spilled or contaminated. Once it’s in the mountain it’s under 1,000 feet of rock and 700 feet above the water table. It’s in a cask inside another cask. It gets less than an inch of rain a year. It’s an ideal place.
Benefits, on that side, it’s huge for us. We lost 2,500 jobs when the Obama administration cut the funding; these were scientists, these were high-paying jobs. And the infrastructure improvements, to the roads, a rail system that could connect north and south of our state would not be just a benefit to Nye County but to the whole state. The jobs it brings, and then that multiplier effect of those people living here, eating here, that money turning over in our economy would be huge for us.
Will the Shimkus legislation push the Yucca effort forward?
I hope so. We’ve talked with Congressman Shimkus and his staff for a number of years. He understands, I think, the issue very well, and [the House Energy and Commerce Committee], they’ve got a handle on it, they’ve had many hearings, it’s come out of their committee.
I think there are some good fixes in there. The only other fix I would have liked to see is interim storage to be allowed in our state. We have all that area out there. Part of the design of Yucca Mountain is drying pads, so go build those, do the interim storage there, finish the licensing process, then put it in the mountain.
It’s still going to take five years to construct some of this, but that’s a lot quicker [than other options]. Anyone that wants to do interim has to go to the NRC, go through the licensing process there, and that’s going to take them five years to prove that they can store it interim somewhere else. So why not do this all at once?
But otherwise the bill is fine, we’re quite happy with it.
Where you think things will stand five years from now, 10 years from now?
My grandmother used to tell the future, I’m not good at it. But I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy: I think reasonable people can disagree, but I think we can come to a resolution to this issue.
I think in five years they will be constructing it, that’s what I’m hoping. By 10 years we will see the fruit of those jobs. The hearings shouldn’t last more than three years … because they’ve already started the process. So within five years they should be constructing it and moving it along.
In 10 years, I think the county won’t be the poorest in the nation. I think we’ll have high-paying jobs, we’ll have good infrastructure, and I look forward to that.
In the other side of my crystal ball, the Senate’s still going to abrogate its authority and play games, and the state’s still going to prefer political science over nuclear science, and they’re going to push it off and push it off, and then there’s going to be an accident somewhere and they’re going to fix it.
They’ve had over 30 years. We put a man on the Moon in less than 10 years, and we didn’t have the technology when we said we were going to do it. So what’s with our nation today, 35 years we can’t open a repository?
You’ve talked about following the science and adhering to the law. But at the core would you say you support a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain?
I personally would, before the board would say absolutely they want the hearings, they want the law followed.
Again, even my board wouldn’t have the final say because it’s a national security issue. But everything I’ve seen, all the people I’ve talked to, I personally think it would be safe, and I definitely have to make that distinction. My board, once presented with that, I believe would be OK with it. They realize the number of jobs it would bring, the infrastructure improvements.
We just need to reassure our citizens that just because it says radioactive doesn’t mean we’re all going to glow in the dark.
