Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
3/13/2015
A state would be required to issue an official proclamation of consent for building a repository for spent nuclear fuel under legislation introduced this week by members of the Nevada Congressional delegation. Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), as well as Reps. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) and Dina Titus (D-Nev.), introduced the “Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act,” which permits the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to authorize construction of a nuclear waste repository only if the Secretary of Energy has secured written consent from the governor of the host state, affected units of local government, and affected Indian tribes. “For decades the federal government wasted billions of dollars attempting to recklessly move America’s deadly high-level nuclear waste to a dump at Yucca Mountain, despite the overwhelming objections of Nevadans,” Senate Minority Leader Reid said in a statement. “The Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act would ensure that no state’s voice may be silenced in the process of being considered for a nuclear waste repository.”
Reid added: “The game was rigged against Nevada when Congress gutted the original science-based siting process for a nuclear waste repository nearly three decades ago. The Government made things worse by spending decades trying to force Yucca Mountain on the people of Nevada over their objections. The Act introduced today will give a voice to state and local governments and save our country from making another costly mistake like Yucca Mountain.”
A long-time opponent to Yucca Mountain, Reid took a large part in the project’s shutdown by the Obama Administration in 2010. The Department of Energy has maintained, despite Republican pressure, that Yucca Mountain remains “unworkable” for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste storage due to the lack of consent for the repository in Nevada. Moniz has emphasized that the Department’s strategy has not changed in the new Congress, which includes Republican control of both houses. DOE still intends on moving forward with a pilot interim storage facility as the preferred strategy to satisfy the nation’s spent fuel disposal needs, but due to language in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Department cannot consider other sites beyond Yucca Mountain without congressional approval. In its Fiscal Year 2016 budget request, DOE asked for a reform that would enable it to move forward with its waste management strategy, but it remains to be seen whether that language will make it into legislation.
Bill Most Likely DOA
The Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act is unlikely to see much movement during this Congress. With Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, as well as the insistence of most Republicans that Yucca Mountain be included in any waste management policy, the bill runs counter to that strategy. “Congress has already approved Yucca Mountain as our country’s current nuclear waste repository, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said we can safely store nuclear waste there for up to one million years,” Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said in a response statement this week. “Continuing to oppose Yucca Mountain is to ignore both the law and science. The new sites we’d seek to establish through the legislation I am reintroducing this year would not take the place of Yucca Mountain — we have more than enough waste to fill Yucca Mountain to its legal capacity — but rather would complement it. Yucca Mountain is part of the solution.”
