Nuclear Industry Reps Expect Another Yucca Mountain Funding Push

By Chris Schneidmiller

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Trump administration is likely in its fiscal 2020 federal budget plan to again seek funding for licensing the radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, nuclear industry representatives said here Tuesday. Whether Congress will appropriate any money remains in question.

“I think the budget request for the next fiscal year will include, as it did previously, money for both DOE and NRC to pursue permanent repository licensing at Yucca Mountain … and a consolidated interim storage program, but we’ll have to wait and see,” Steve Nesbit, president of LMNT Consulting and a longtime executive at Duke Energy, said during a politics-focused panel discussion at an Institute of Nuclear Materials Management conference on spent fuel.

The Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission together requested about $150 million in fiscal 2018 and $170 million in the current fiscal 2019 for nuclear waste management operations, nearly all of it to resume the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding that has been stalled for the better part of a decade. They were rebuffed by Congress both times. The agencies, respectively the license applicant and adjudicator, are due next month to roll out their budget requests for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Congress in 1987 directed that the nation’s nuclear waste repository be built on federal property in Nevada, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department in 2008 submitted its license application to the NRC for permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain of spent nuclear fuel from commercial power reactors and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. Pressed by powerful Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later.

As President Donald Trump took office in 2017, and Reid retired, backers of the project hoped for a “grand compromise” under which Congress would appropriate money for both Yucca Mountain and interim storage of spent fuel until the permanent repository is ready. That has not happened, Nesbit acknowledged.

“It’s always going to be something political. The challenges aren’t technical, they’re always political,” Eric Knox, a former associate director at DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management and current AECOM executive, said during the panel discussion.

The outcome of the November midterm elections has potentially changed the dynamic on Capitol Hill for resuming work on Yucca Mountain, speakers said.

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who worked relentlessly to kill the program, lost his re-election bid. It was widely accepted that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last year blocked any appropriations or policy bills that would have advanced Yucca Mountain in hopes of shoring up Heller’s re-election chances and the GOP majority in the upper chamber. Heller’s exit removes that political roadblock.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the Senate’s lead appropriator for DOE and the NRC, has also recently spoken in favor of funding both interim storage and permanent disposal of nuclear waste in the upcoming budget. In prior years, the Alexander-led Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee has focused on funding for interim storage as the fastest means for DOE to meet its legal mandate to begin moving nuclear waste away from its point of origin.

Meanwhile, Democrats have retaken control of the House in the new 116th Congress. “The Democratic leadership, their attention is elsewhere. This is not No. 1 or probably No. 101 on their list of priorities,” Nesbit said.

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) pressed a pro-Yucca nuclear waste policy bill through the House in the last Congress only to see it die in the Senate. His influence has waned as he drops from chairman to ranking member of the environment subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which provides legislative oversight of the NRC and DOE.

Nevada’s congressional delegation remains united in opposition to Yucca Mountain. Nesbit noted reports that freshman Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.) received a pledge from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to block the project. While the details of that assurance are not known, it is “kind of an ominous sign in the House of Representatives,” he said. Spokespeople for Pelosi and Lee did not respond to requests for comment.

“We’re certainly going to be trying to look for new champions” in the new Congress, said Katrina McMurrian, executive director of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition. “I think one of the takeaways from what we’ve been reading, is that it looks like the burden is going to be a little bit more on the Senate side because of the concerns we’ve heard with respect to maybe Nevada securing the House leadership’s commitment not to move forward on Yucca Mountain.”

There is also the possibility, in the current highly partisan atmosphere in Washington, that Congress will approve no full-year appropriations bills leading to the 2020 elections, Nesbit said. That would leave federal agencies operating on a series of short-term measures that would largely lock in funding at prior-year levels — theoretically meaning no money for Yucca Mountain.

The United States by 2008 had already spent $15 billion to evaluate potential sites for the repository, according to the Government Accountability Office. Roughly $39 billion remains in the Nuclear Waste Fund that is intended to pay for the project. That is enough to build the repository, if not to actually operate it for 150 years, Knox said.

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