President Donald Trump on Friday signed a third short-term budget for fiscal 2018 to prevent a shutdown of the federal government, including the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. His approval came just a day after both chambers of Congress voted in favor of the continuing resolution through Jan. 19, 2018.
The latest stopgap spending plan succeeds the budget that was due to expire today. It largely keeps federal agencies funded at levels from fiscal 2017, which ended on Sept. 30. For fiscal 2017, the NRC received $905 million for salaries and expenses in an omnibus spending plan approved well into the budget year last May.
The continuing resolution again means no funding for the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Trump administration is seeking a total of $150 million in fiscal 2018 for the NRC and Department of Energy to resume licensing activities for the facility demanded in the 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The House has signed off on that request, but the Senate Appropriations Committee included no money for Yucca Mountain in an energy spending bill that is still waiting for a floor vote in the upper chamber.
Congress now has another month, not including the holiday break, to pass full-year funding for the NRC, DOE, and all other federal agencies.
Congressman Representing Yucca Mountain District Won’t Seek Re-Election
The Democratic Nevada congressman whose district includes Yucca Mountain will not seek re-election in 2018, depriving the chamber’s minority party of an incumbent in a battleground district that has changed party hands repeatedly since it was created less than a decade ago.
Rep. Ruben Kihuen, a freshman lawmaker from the Silver State’s 4th Congressional District, announced Saturday he would not seek re-election. Kihuen, who strongly opposes storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, made the announcement after the House Ethics Committee said Dec. 15 it would investigate allegations the congressman sexually harassed a female member of his staff during the 2016 campaign.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal was the first to report over the weekend that Kihuen would not run again. BuzzFeed reported the sexual harassment allegations Dec. 1. BuzzFeed and other publications have since reported additional allegations against Kihuen by other women.
Kihuen denies the allegations.
Kihuen’s central Nevada district includes Nye County: the site of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. The 4th District was formed following the 2010 Census, and voters there elected their first representative in 2012. Democrats have controlled the district for two of the three terms of its existence.
Kihuen’s decision to stand aside in 2018 conceivably gives a pro-Yucca GOP candidate a shot to capture the seat, but pro-Yucca candidates of either party are political unicorns in Nevada; even the dean of the state’s Washington delegation, Sen. Dean Heller (R), unflinchingly opposes the project.
The lone GOP representative from Nevada, Rep. Mark Amodei, supports Department of Energy nuclear research at Yucca but opposes building a nuclear-waste repository there.
Nevada’s 4th District has proved hard for either party to hold. The district elected a Democrat in 2012, a Republican in 2014, and then Democrat Kihuen in 2016. In 2012, Democrat Steven Horsford thumped Danny Tarkanian: the aspirant Republican politician and veteran of several failed campaigns who is now challenging Heller for the Republican nomination in the 2018 Senate race.
Nevada Ready to Rejoin Yucca Mountain Licensing Battle
Meanwhile, the state of Nevada has joined the U.S. Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff in formally declaring its intention to participate in any resumed NRC review of the license application for the Yucca Mountain repository.
On Dec. 15, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Executive Director Robert Halstead submitted the state’s response to an 11-part questionnaire sent on Oct. 27 by Margie Janney, acting administrator of the NRC’s Licensing Support Network.
The top question is, “If the Yucca Mountain adjudication should be re-instituted, do you plan to participate?” The state checked the “yes” box, and left the comments section blank.
The response is no surprise, as Nevada’s leadership has vehemently opposed making the state home to tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste from other states. As one of the non-federal parties to the NRC license adjudication, Nevada filed more than 200 contentions against the DOE application before the Obama administration stopped the effort in 2010. It has pledged to file dozens more contentions should the Trump administration succeed in persuading Congress to provide the NRC and DOE with funding in the current budget year to resume the license adjudication.
Nevada said it also anticipated filing more than 1,000 items of additional documentary material for a revived Yucca Mountain adjudication. “Nevada cannot estimate the volume of documentary material (DM) it may submit, should the proceeding resume,” the state said in the questionnaire. “The original LSN was shut down more than six years ago, and additional DM has accumulated during that interim.”
The Energy Department, NRC staff, and the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the nuclear power industry, all responded by Dec. 1 to Janney’s list of questions. Each indicated its readiness to again participate in the Yucca licensing process.
None of the other 17 non-federal parties, which include counties and Native American tribes near Yucca Mountain, have responded to the questionnaire, an NRC spokesman said Thursday.
The regulator is considering reconstitution or replacement of the Licensing Support Network, the repository for documents related to its Yucca Mountain license adjudication. The system was shut down in 2011, but about 3.7 million documents remain stored in the LSN Library within the NRC’s ADAMS online document database.
The NRC has scheduled a Jan. 30-31, 2018, meeting at its Rockville, Md., headquarters of the Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel. The focus of the meeting is “the options available for
reconstituting the LSN’s functionality,” according to a Dec. 21 Federal Register notice.
A Dec. 21 NRC report analyzes options for reconstituting or replacing the LSN. They encompass:
- Maintaining the existing LSN in ADAMS and sharing any additional documents via traditional means of any discovery process, such as mail, delivery service, or email.
- Using the searchable ADAMS LSN Library.
- Moving the library to the Cloud.
- Rebuilding the original Licensing Support Network.
