Lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee this week approved a fiscal 2018 energy budget that “fully supports” the Department of Energy’s plan to create a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada — though in a slightly different way than the White House imagined.
“The Committee fully supports the Administration’s position to move forward with Yucca Mountain,” the House Appropriations Committee wrote in a detailed report that accompanied the 2018 DOE budget recommendation they sent to the floor this week. The full House had not scheduled a floor vote by deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor.
While the $30-billion DOE budget bill provides the $120 million the Donald Trump administration requested to resume the arduous process of licensing the Nye County, Nev., site as a permanent nuclear-waste storage facility, it does not direct DOE to bookkeep the money in the new Yucca Mountain and interim waste storage programs DOE asked to create as part of the 2018 budget request sent to Capitol Hill in May.
Of the $120 million the House Appropriations Committee recommended for Yucca, $90 million would be nested in the Nuclear Waste Disposal funding line, with another $30 million placed in the Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal account. The administration asked for $110 million for Yucca and $10 million to study interim storage options. Still, the committee bill would allow DOE to trim some existing programs in the agency’s Office of Nuclear Energy for Yucca-specific purposes.
For example, Congress in 2017 appropriated $62.5 million for DOE’s Used Nuclear Fuel Disposition Research and Development budget, which the agency uses to study how spent nuclear fuel behaves and degrades during storage, transportation, and disposal.
The Energy Department wanted to plow all $62.5 million of that into the new Yucca office for 2018, but the committee did not recommend that. The panel’s bill instead would allow DOE to direct about $17.5 million in 2018 from the Used Nuclear Fuel Disposition Research and Development account for Yucca-specific studies. The recommendation would rope off some $45 million of the account for “generic Used Nuclear Fuel Disposition research and development activities,” according to the detailed spending report appended to the bill.
If the House committee’s bill is a step forward for Yucca Mountain, it is also a reminder of how much work DOE has to do before the agency can formally resume the regulatory march toward opening the yet-unbuilt facility.
The Yucca funding the committee recommends in 2018, for example, should be used by DOE to “reestablish its capability to respond to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the adjudicatory process and to otherwise fully support the Yucca Mountain licensing process.” That is a far cry from actually beginning that process, which experts estimate would take two to five years to complete, once it does start.
Meanwhile, the House’s bill would forbid DOE from using any of its 2018 budget “to conduct closure of adjudicatory functions, technical review, or support activities associated with the Yucca Mountain geologic repository license application, or for actions that irrevocably remove the possibility that Yucca Mountain may be a repository option in the future.”
That language did not appear in either of the last two omnibus spending bills passed by Congress, both of which were penned by a GOP-controlled Congress. Whether the clause will become law with the pro-Yucca President Donald Trump in the White House remains to be seen.
The prohibition against obstructing Yucca also extends to some $7 million in funding the bill would provide in 2018 for the state of Nevada and local Nevada governments and tribes that would be affected by the facility, according to the bill. California would even get a small share of the money appropriated for local Nevada governments.
Still, the committee counts itself firmly in DOE’s corner when it comes to Yucca Mountain, the chief congressional shepherd of the agency’s 2018 budget said this week.
“The bill sends a clear message that it is time to address the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel and finish Yucca Mountain license applications,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chairman of the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, said during Wednesday’s bill markup.
The Senate has yet to announce its proposed 2018 energy and water spending levels in 2018, or to signal whether it would be willing to let the House its way when it comes to Yucca. Despite the departure of Sen. Harry Reid, the former Democratic leader from Nevada who opposed Yucca Mountain loudly and unequivocally, Democrats in the upper chamber have treaded carefully around the issue, preferring instead to discuss interim nuclear waste-storage options that would at least get spent fuel away from the power plants that created it.
Fiscal 2018 begins on Oct. 1.
