For the second year in a row, the full House has passed a Department of Energy budget bill that would fund the agency’s application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent repository for nuclear waste.
And, also for the second consecutive year, the measure faces stiff opposition in the Senate, where appropriators again refused to fund Yucca, and where the electorally vulnerable Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has turned unconditional opposition to the congressionally mandated disposal facility into a campaign rally cry.
Heller’s opposition to the bill has reportedly peeved pro-Yucca Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who pleaded this week on the House floor with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) not to bring the 2019 DOE budget up for a vote before the November midterm elections, news outlets including Politico and Energy & Environment News reported. House lawmakers have said the Senate will not put Yucca up for a vote in a budget bill while Heller’s seat, and by proxy the GOP 51-49 majority, is vulnerable.
The House’s 2019 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, approved by a 235-179 vote Friday in a “minibus” spending package that included two other federal budget bills, would provide DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) with nearly $270 million in total in 2019 to restart the agency’s application to license the disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, as Congress ordered more than 30 years ago.
House members approved the bill along an essentially party-line vote of 235-179.
The House proposal is $100 million more than the Donald Trump administration sought for Yucca in 2019. That would boost the DOE budget for licensing to $220 million, while the NRC would get the nearly $48 million it requested.
During floor debate Thursday, the House shot down amendments from Reps. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Dina Titus (D-Nev.), and Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.) — the last of whom is departing Congress after this year amid sexual harassment allegations — that would have deleted $190 million in proposed Yucca funding intended for DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The lower chamber also voted down a separate amendment from the three lawmakers that would have lifted a legal prohibition on using federal funds to cancel Yucca altogether. Both amendments failed on a voice vote.
The Senate, like the House, was expected to vote on DOE’s 2019 budget in a minibus appropriations package that includes other federal spending bills. The Senate had not scheduled an appropriations vote at press time Friday for RadWaste Monitor, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday the upper chamber would likely tackle spending bills in August.
McConnell canceled the Senate’s traditional August recess, citing Democratic obstruction of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. McConnell has also noted Senate Republicans have confirmed a record number of judicial appointees in Trump’s first term.
Meanwhile, the Senate’s Appropriations Committee in May approved a 2019 DOE budget that supports creation only of an interim nuclear-waste storage site that could pool spent fuel from civilian power plants before the material is shipped to a permanent repository.
The Senate committee recommended $35.3 million for Integrated Waste Management System operations to implement spent fuel consolidation. It called on Energy Secretary Rick Perry to use $10 million to contract for management of spent fuel, including by a private company for storage.
Another $62.5 million, under the Senate bill, would be directed to ongoing research and development on “behavior of spent fuel in long-term storage, under transportation conditions, and in various geologic media,” according to a detailed report appended to the chamber’s 2019 DOE appropriations bill.
The House and Senate last year also disagreed on funding Yucca Mountain licensing, and the omnibus appropriations bill signed into law in March provided no money for the program.
