Requiring comprehensive consent to build a nuclear waste disposal site is “an excuse to do nothing,” according to a leader in the Nevada county that would be home to the long-delayed repository under Yucca Mountain.
“To believe that any controversial project in the 21st century will get consent from every level of government – state, counties, cities, tribes – is unrealistic,” Nye County Commissioner Leo Blundo, the body’s liaison on nuclear waste issues, wrote in an Aug. 14 letter to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ranking Member Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). “To believe that the consent will stand over the years of review and licensing is even more unrealistic.”
Blundo noted that the law on disposition of the nation’s radioactive waste remains the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which as amended in 2987 directs the Department of Energy to build its repository under a plot of federal land about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The commissioner was offering his thoughts on Senate Bill 1234, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019, filed by Murkowski on April 30. The legislation contains a number of measures to promote interim storage and permanent disposition of tens of thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste. They include requiring consent for any storage or disposal facility from the governor of the participating state, the governing body of the municipality in which the site would be built, and the governing bodies of impacted Indian tribes.
Blundo argued that it could be difficult to achieve “universal” consensus, and that in any case it might not last. He pointed to the case of New Mexico, where Holtec International hopes to build an interim storage facility for spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. While the state government under then-Gov. Susana Martinez (R) supported the project, it faces strenuous opposition from the administration of current Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D).
In any case, a permanent disposal solution will be needed for interim storage to succeed, according to Blundo.
“Given the unlikelihood of getting consent for a permanent repository, if an interim site is authorized, it will become a de facto final resting place for nuclear waste,” he wrote. “As a result, States and local governments will likely be unwilling to accept interim storage.”
