Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz mostly voiced support for the Senate’s nuclear waste legislation yesterday, calling major parts of the bill “potentially workable” at a hearing on the bill, although he noted the administration has not taken a position on the legislation. At the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Moniz said the bill—proposed in June by a bipartisan group of Senators led by committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)—put forward a “potentially workable solution” in its proposed new government agency to handle spent fuel. The bill would create a new agency with a single administrator and a five-member oversight board. More important than its structure, though, is “the authorities that go to this agency,” Moniz said yesterday. “This is a multi-decade activity that draws upon the Nuclear Waste Fund and we feel a dedicated organization that manages all aspects of the back end of the fuel cycle is the right way to go.”
In an effort to head off House opposition to the bill sure to be voiced at an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing today, Republican Senators argued yesterday that even if the Yucca Mountain project were resurrected, it would be insufficient to handle current U.S. spent fuel disposal needs. “If nuclear power grows, or even maintains the market share of 20 percent, we will almost certainly need more than one repository,” Murkowski said at yesterday’s hearing. Ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), another main author of the legislation, said, “The legal capacity for Yucca is 70,000 metric tons, and even if it were to be filled up with commercial spent fuel we have today, it would be about full and we would need at least one more repository.” The argument was not persuasive even to some on the Senate committee, however, with Sens. James Risch (R-Idaho) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) calling on the Department of Energy to follow the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which identifies Yucca as the country’s repository for used fuel.
