The Senate on Wednesday voted 87-10 in favor of advancing the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which provides no support for shipping radioactive waste from U.S. defense programs to the always-controversial planned repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
This is the latest hit to the Trump administration’s efforts to resume licensing for the underground facility intended to permanently hold tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
President Donald Trump had not signed the NDAA by deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor, but there has been no indication he is considering a veto.
The legislation will set military policies and defense spending allowances for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, though actual funding levels are set by separate appropriations bills.
The House version of the legislation authorized $30 million for defense nuclear waste disposal, specifically Yucca Mountain and interim storage. The Senate authorized no funding for that line item in its bill, and the compromise legislation now waiting on Trump’s signature followed the upper chamber’s lead.
“I’m proud to vote in support of this legislation that supports our men and women in uniform, gives our troops the largest pay raise in almost a decade, and provides our military with the tools necessary to continue to combat emerging threats around the world and keep us safe. I’m also proud that once again, I successfully killed efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives to use the defense bill as a vehicle to dump nuclear waste in Nevada,” Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) said in a prepared statement Wednesday after the vote.
Heller, like his congressional colleagues from Nevada, is a vehement opponent of burying radioactive waste below Yucca Mountain. In his statement he said he had in April called on Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) to ensure the NDAA did not support the repository.
Congress in 1987 designated the Nye County, Nev., site at the sole permanent recipient of U.S. nuclear waste, but the facility has not yet been licensed much less built. The George W. Bush administration Department of Energy submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, but the Obama administration halted the proceeding two years later. The Trump administration has sought funding to revive the process, but so far to no avail.
The Senate in recent years has generally been more skeptical of the project than the House, focusing instead on interim storage of radioactive waste now stored around the country. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is also said to be hesitant to allow any pro-Yucca measure to advance, to avoid creating new troubles for the politically vulnerable Heller and the GOP’s 51-49 majority in the Senate.
A House “minibus” appropriations bill passed in June would provide $270 million in fiscal 2019 for DOE and NRC licensing for the repository — $100 million more than the administration requested. The Senate version of the bill, passed later in June, would give nothing to Yucca. Lawmakers have yet to meet to produce a compromise energy appropriations measure. The House is in recess through August.
The Senate has also not taken up Rep. John Shimkus’ (R-Ill.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, which the House passed in May by a vote of 340-72. A Shimkus spokesperson said this week there is nothing to report on the bill, which is intended to advance the federal government’s ability to build the Yucca site.
