House appropriators during a budget markup this week came out swinging against two proposed commercial interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel in Texas and New Mexico.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is racing to license the construction of high level [nuclear waste] storage sites both in New Mexico and in Texas,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) told members of the House Committee on Appropriations Tuesday during debate on the lower chamber’s energy and water appropriations act for 2023. “I will emphasize, there’s no consent,” he said.
The House spending panel Tuesday favorably reported the 2023 energy and water budget to the full chamber on a 32-24 party-line vote.
Cuellar told RadWaste Monitor following Tuesday’s markup that he and other opponents of commercial interim storage would do “everything we can” to block the sites from breaking ground.
Cuellar referred to two proposed interim storage facilities, one operated by private companies Holtec International and another by Interim Storage Partners (ISP). NRC in September licensed the ISP site, planned for Andrews, Texas.
Cuellar Tuesday once again offered, and subsequently withdrew, an amendment to the House’s energy and water budget that would have barred the use of federal funds to support private interim storage facilities. The congressman made a similar move at last year’s energy and water markup.
“I hope that we can find a way to find a permanent solution to this instead of coming back every year to this particular situation,” Cuellar said during debate of the bill that will fund the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), concurred with the thrust of Cuellar’s amendment.
“The state of Texas and the state of New Mexico strongly oppose these proposed facilities,” Granger said.
The Nevada delegation was less enthused with the proposal.
“As we all know, my state is home to Yucca Mountain, so I know just how urgent the need for consent based siting is nuclear waste,” said Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.). “I’ve worked hand-in-hand with Secretary [Jennifer] Granholm and the Department of Energy to encourage consent-based siting for nuclear waste, and this amendment would completely derail the progress that has been made towards these alternatives,” she said.
DOE is in the midst of its latest attempt to site a federally-operated interim storage facility. The agency is currently working to summarize the 200 or so responses it received in response to a November request for information about how the department should conduct its consent-based search for a storage depot.
“We understand there are some concerns from certain folks,” Cuellar said, “but I think this is a situation in which the federal government and the Department of Energy should come in and provide a permanent solution, instead of allowing some private company to do this.”
