Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) wants to ensure the Department of Energy’s application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear waste repository is judged in the state, according to the latest published missive in a long-running letter-writing campaign.
“[W]ill you commit to holding key substantive portions of the Yucca Mountain proceeding in Nevada should administrative adjudication be restarted and sufficient resources become available?” Heller wrote in a Tuesday letter to Kristine Svinicki, chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Heller began a letter-writing campaign to Svinicki almost as soon as she was confirmed as NRC chair last year and has since at least March sought to pin her down about the location of possible future licensing proceedings. Svinicki has told Heller the NRC is still shopping for venues, and will broaden its search when and if Congress provides the roughly $50 million the commission requested for Yucca licensing activities in 2019.
“We have not yet responded to the [Tuesday] letter,” an NRC spokesperson said Tuesday by email.
Congress has yet to approve funding needed for the NRC to conduct the quasi-judicial review of the DOE Yucca License application, which the Obama administration halted and the Trump administration hopes to resume. The House has proved willing to provide whatever the Trump administration requests for Yucca — this year, a House appropriations subcommittee recommended about $270 million, or $100 million more than requested — but the Senate has yet to appropriate any funding at all. Heller claims credit for keeping the money out of Senate appropriations bills.
In a letter to Heller last week, Svinicki said the NRC has yet to find a suitable site to hold licensing proceedings in Nevada. The commission considered federal properties at Las Vegas, Reno, and Pahrump, but determined they are not large enough, Svinicki wrote. The NRC might host the licensing proceedings at its Rockville, Md., headquarters, or conduct them remotely using “virtual courtroom” technology.
Heller, in the letter dated Tuesday, said that answer was “unsatisfactory” and asked Svinicki by May 22 to give him a yes-or-no answer about conducting the licensing process in-person in Nevada.
