The House Energy and Commerce environment and climate change subcommittee is scheduled Thursday to vote on a bill aimed at advancing establishment of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 is among 15 bills scheduled for markup beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern time at 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.
The legislation, filed in May by Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), is an updated version of a bill pushed in the last Congress by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). That legislation was advanced out of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the full House, but never got a vote in the Senate before the 115th Congress ended on Jan. 3.
The bill, if passed, would make a host of amendments to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. That bill assigned the Department of Energy responsibility for disposal of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste and, as amended in 1987, directed that the material be placed in a repository at Yucca Mountain.
The measures would support completion of the long-frozen licensing process for the disposal facility and mandate that the Energy Department establish a program for temporary, consolidated storage of used nuclear fuel until the repository is ready, according to McNerney.
