Nevada lawmakers and a Republican congressman this week introduced dueling bills concerning federal plans for permanent storage of U.S. nuclear waste. Two other Republican congressman also introduced a bill that would allow the Energy Department to contract private nuclear waste storage companies.
The Obama administration in 2009 canceled the planned Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada, pursuing instead a plan for separate storage facilities for commercial and defense waste. The administration in December unveiled a draft plan for the defense waste repository. DOE on Thursday released a draft for its consent-based siting process, opening public comment on the document.
Congress, particularly members of the House of Representatives, have continued to favor reviving the Yucca Mountain project — though that enthusiasm largely did not extend to the Nevada delegation.
Reps. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.), and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) on Wednesday introduced the Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act, which would allow NRC authorization of a nuclear waste repository only if the government secures written consent from the governor of the host state, along with affected governments and tribes. The bill also was introduced in the 114th Congress, and Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) have introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
“Today we send a clear message to the next administration and those in Congress who have long-championed the Yucca Mountain project that the State of Nevada remains opposed to nuclear waste storage within our borders,” Titus said in a statement. “No state or community should have a nuclear waste dump forced upon them. This bipartisan, bicameral, commonsense legislation gives voice to those most affected while creating a process to address the nation’s nuclear waste concerns.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) introduced the Sensible Nuclear Waste Disposition Act, which would bar the Energy Department from building a new defense waste repository until the NRC has issued a licensing decision on Yucca Mountain.
Wilson said in a statement Wednesday: “The federal government has dedicated enormous resources to completing the nuclear storage facility at Yucca Mountain. However, the Obama Administration has tried to do everything in its power to stall the completion of the facility, holding up construction under political red tape—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s own safety evaluation has found that Yucca Mountain far exceeds the regulatory standards and would not be a threat to the local population of Nevada.”
On Thursday, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Mike Conaway (R-Texas) introduced the Interim Consolidated Storage Act, which would allow the Energy Department to contract temporary storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists has submitted its NRC application for a 40,000-metric-ton-capacity interim storage facility in West Texas, while Holtec International is eyeing a March submittal date for a 120,000-metric-ton capacity facility about 12 miles away from DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.
Conaway, whose congressional district encompasses Waste Control Specialists’ waste storage complex, introduced similar legislation in the 114th Congress. Issa’s district is home to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, where residents have been clamoring for the federal government to remove nuclear waste from the Pacific coast.
“Allowing it to stay there indefinitely is only asking for trouble,” Issa said in a statement. “This is just one of hundreds of examples of similar sites nationwide. This bill advances a creative solution to this problem and is a reasonable plan to get the waste moved quickly and securely.”
After President Barack Obama canceled Yucca Mountain in 2009, DOE withdrew the project license application in 2010. In 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the NRC to resume the license review using previously appropriated funds. The regulator has spent about $12 million of Nuclear Waste Fund money on Yucca licensing activities since 2013, and the state of Nevada estimates DOE will need $1.7 billion and NRC $330 million for the licensing activities that remain. If licensing were to resume, DOE would need to defend itself against some 300 legal contentions challenging the repository concept.
Yucca Relicensing ‘Silly’ If You Believe Project Is Unworkable: Boyle
A senior Energy Department official said Tuesday that any attempt to resume licensing proceedings for the canceled Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada seems “silly” if the project is unworkable, as DOE has repeatedly characterized it.
Appearing at the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management’s Spent Fuel Seminar in Washington, D.C., DOE used nuclear fuel disposition office Director William Boyle was asked about the Trump transition team querying the department on what it would take to resurrect the mothballed project with the NRC.
Boyle said DOE representatives met in July with officials from the Government Accountably Office, which is conducting an audit on a potential Yucca Mountain restart at the request of House Republicans. He said DOE reaffirmed the current administration’s stance that Yucca Mountain is an unworkable solution, as the department does not own the proper land and water rights
“If you believe that, any work on a restart seems kind of silly,” Boyle said.
In opening Tuesday’s events, the Nuclear Infrastructure Council’s David Blee said he believes the next administration is going to “make Yucca Mountain great again.” Boyle’s appearance followed.
“We have not as a department worked on a restart. Having said that, do people talk about it in the hallways and that sort of thing? You should have been there the day after the election. Yeah, people like to talk about it,” Boyle said, adding that if a court or Congress directs the department to proceed with Yucca Mountain, it will do so.
Speaking at the event on Thursday, House Energy and Commerce Committee staffer Andy Zach said the most recent vote in the House showed 80 percent of members supporting continued NRC work on the Yucca license. Committee members Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.) urged Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in March to “expeditiously” resume the Yucca Mountain licensing process with the NRC. They also requested the GAO audit, the findings of which are expected in the spring.
“We’re not afraid to talk about this anymore,” Zach said Thursday. “We know what work needs to be done. There are certain ‘Y’ words that aren’t taboo around the hill anymore.”
NRC Will Need Time If Yucca Returns: Lombard
A senior NRC official said Wednesday the agency is not ready to take up licensing proceedings for Yucca Mountain, but officials have had brief, high-level discussions about the prospect.
Restarting the process would take some time because the agency has lost much of the personnel involved in the previous licensing proceeding, said NRC Spent Fuel Management Division Director Mark Lombard, speaking at the INMM conference. He estimated that five officials remain at NRC who originally handled Yucca Mountain-related work.
NRC’s Yucca Mountain license review included more than 100 staff and contractor employees. The application was docketed in 2008, and the staff’s review lasted until 2011, when the agency closed out the program. The commission directed staff to complete a safety evaluation report and supplement the environmental impact statement in 2013, following the federal court order, and the work was completed in 2016.
“In reality, based on how we’ve changed our organization, we’re not ready today to stand up to Yucca Mountain (proceedings),” Lombard said. “We’ve had some very high-level and very brief discussions of it. … We don’t have folks sitting around waiting to get an application for Yucca Mountain or any other licensing action for that matter.”
Following Lombard’s appearance, a panel of industry experts, all favoring resuming Yucca Mountain licensing, discussed what could unfold in the next few years. Duke Energy nuclear policy chief Steve Nesbit said he anticipated the remaining licensing process would take three years, while Van Ness Feldman law firm partner Michael McBride said five years is more realistic.
McBride noted that Nevada’s anti-Yucca Agency for Nuclear Projects has been gearing up for this battle for years. The state plans to fully adjudicate 218 admitted contentions in opposition to the license application and submit 30 to 50 new contentions, based on new information and the NRC’s environmental impact statement supplement. The contentions challenge Yucca Mountain’s site suitability, disposal concept, groundwater impacts, rail access, and impacts on Las Vegas.
“This is going to be a very difficult proceeding, and DOE better be ready because Nevada will be,” McBride said.
Bob Halstead, executive director for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said in a phone interview Friday that Yucca Mountain is dead. Those looking for a license restart, he said, have “not done serious thinking about how much time and money it would take to actually restart it.”
“I think it’s going to be very harmful for the nuclear industry, to put the kind of energy that they will have to put into this, to have any chance of winning, and I think in the end, I think it will end up harming the interests of the nuclear industry to insist on going forward with Yucca Mountain over Nevada’s opposition,” he said.
NRC is Ready for Yucca Restart: Former Commissioner
A former NRC member offered the opinion Tuesday that the agency is “fully prepared” to handle the nearly 300 legal contentions against Yucca.
Jeff Merrifield, who served on the board from 1998 to 2007, also spoke at the INMM event. During his appearance, he offered a seven-item wish list to President-elect Donald Trump, including that the next administration seek maximum funding to pursue licensing proceedings for Yucca Mountain, as well as support private interim nuclear waste storage efforts in Texas and New Mexico.
“It is well within the capability of the agency to work its way through those contentions with the (NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board) panels and resolve those,” said Merrifield, now a partner at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. “I have no doubt that the agency can professionally and promptly renegotiate efforts to get the licensing back and up to speed.”
Merrifield suggested the Trump administration re-establish the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management to manage the repository effort and pursue legislation to obtain the land and water rights at the site. He also urged Trump to take an active role in negotiating an appropriate settlement with Nevada, without conducting a consent-based siting process favored by the Obama administration. Merrifield said he supports formation of an independent, quasi-public corporation to take responsibility, either through or from DOE, for the development, licensing, and operation of the Yucca Mountain site; and the authorization of DOE to work on transportation plans for the project.
