A House committee on Wednesday passed a bill intended to advance centralized storage and permanent disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste, while the long-promised Senate version of the legislation was finally filed.
Rep. Jerry McNerney’s (D-Calif.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 contains a set of measures to assist the Department of Energy in building its planned geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. It would also authorize the agency to establish one or more temporary storage facilities to hold spent nuclear reactor fuel until final disposal is available.
McNerney noted that high-level defense waste and used fuel from nuclear power reactors are held at more than 100 locations in 39 states.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are swimming in nuclear waste,” he said. “This hazardous logjam puts communities at risk and inhibits our ability to integrate nuclear power into a robust, emissions reducing agenda to combat the impending threats of climate change.”
The bill was passed on a voice vote for consideration by the full House. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) had said he would vote against the legislation, noting concerns that consolidated interim storage of spent fuel could become permanent if the federal government never builds the repository. One proposed storage site would be built in New Mexico. Meanwhile, Congress has rejected multiple Trump administration requests to fund resumption of licensing for Yucca Mountain, which the Obama administration defunded nearly a decade ago.
“This is not an interim storage bill, this is a permanent storage bill,” Lujan said.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) introduced the upper chamber’s version of the legislation, after issuing a discussion draft in April. The Senate Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 was assigned to the Environment and Public Works Committee, which Barrasso chairs.
Among the measures in both bills:
- Authorizing the Department of Energy to site, build, and manage at least one “monitored retrievable storage facility,” and to contract for storage of agency-owned waste by a federally licensed commercial operation.
- Requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a final decision on licensing a repository before waste can be stored at the first interim facility.
- Transferring management of the Yucca Mountain property from the Interior Department to DOE, which would then prioritize use there of the Yucca Mountain project.
