The Nevada Assembly has advanced a resolution that would, if also passed by the state Senate, codify the state’s long-running opposition to opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
Assembly Joint Resolution 10 passed 32-6 late Friday. Four lawmakers were absent for the vote. The Nevada Legislature is scheduled to be in session through June 5.
Nevada lawmakers voted on the resolution only days before the the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee was scheduled to hold a hearing on a 45-page bill that would grease the skids to open Yucca, as the Donald Trump administration has proposed.
The Trump administration wants to spend $120 million in fiscal 2018 on interim storage of nuclear waste and to resume the Energy Department’s license application for Yucca Mountain with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: the federal regulator for U.S. nuclear power plants and the nuclear waste they create.
Nevada’s U.S. congressional delegation and Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) strongly oppose Yucca Mountain.
Several members of Congress from Nevada hope to speak before the Energy and Commerce panel on Wednesday, but it was not clear whether that would occur, The Associated Press reported. As of Sunday the subcommittee had not released a witness list for the hearing.
The Obama administration halted the Yucca license application in 2010, though both it and the Trump administration have supported interim storage sites where spent nuclear fuel now stored outside U.S. power plans could be consolidated before being shipped to Nevada.
