Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) on Monday evening led a group of lawmakers to the floor of the House of Representatives to call for action to address the decades-old impasse in finding a permanent home for the nation’s nuclear waste.
Standing before a sign with the title of legislation Shimkus filed last year to advance the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) noted Congress assigned the U.S. Energy Department to begin disposing of spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste by Jan. 31, 1998. By congressional decree in 1987, that waste is supposed to go below Yucca Mountain.
That has yet to happen, due in significant part to opposition from now-retired Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other members of the Silver State’s congressional delegation.
“Political science has deprived the public of actual science to prove that nuclear waste can be safely and permanently disposed of,” Walden said. “As a consequence of this political interference, taxpayers and ratepayers across the country are on the hook for DOE’s inaction. The American people pay over $2 million every day to temporarily store used fuel scattered throughout the United States.
Other lawmakers who conveyed a similar message during an hour of Special Order speeches included Reps. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), Jason Lewis (R-Minn.), Randy Weber (R-Texas), and Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.).
“Why is it important that we pass the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017? Because first of all we owe it to the American people,” Fleischmann said.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee backed the Shimkus bill in a 49-4 vote in June, but the legislation has yet to get a floor vote. In his own speech, Shimkus projected the measure could get 300 votes if brought before the full House.
Speaking ahead of her colleagues, Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) called Yucca Mountain an “unworkable project.”
“There are design flaws that the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s] own analysis show lead to radioactive waste leaking into the water table and transportation plans would ship more than 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste by train and truck through 329 congressional districts for years to come,” she said.
