Members of Nevada’s congressional delegation plan to reintroduce a bill that would put an end to the Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository, they said this week.
The new legislation would be more or less the same as bills introduced last Congress that sought to bar federal spending on the authorized repository in Nye County, Nev., or any other, without permission from a broad array of regional stakeholders, a spokesperson for Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) told RadWaste Monitor in an email Wednesday evening.
Cortez Masto, Nevada’s senior senator, is leading the charge to bring back the Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act from 2019. Cortez Masto’s bill in the last session died in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) introduced a companion measure in the lower chamber that didn’t make it out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee during the 116th Congress.
If Cortez Masto’s latest disposal proposal becomes law, it would prevent the Department of Energy from using the Nuclear Waste Fund for developing nuclear waste repositories until the agency reached an agreement with the host state as well as any local governments or indigenous tribes.
“This legislation would ensure that state, local, and tribal governments are central to a permanent repository and storage program, and it would give Nevadans a meaningful voice in any plans to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain,” Cortez Masto said in a press release Tuesday.
Nuclear energy and waste disposal have received some attention from Congress in the early days of the Biden administration, starting with now-Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s promise in January that the administration would not build a repository at Yucca Mountain. In her Jan. 27 confirmation hearing, Granholm said that she supports a “consent-based siting” approach for a permanent repository and referenced the 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future as a possible blueprint for such a strategy.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) unveiled the nuclear-inclusive CLEAN Future Act alongside Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) and Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.). Tonko told RadWaste Monitor at a press conference Feb. 9 that he anticipates the Biden administration will “perhaps” conduct a nuclear energy review that touches on waste disposal.
Meanwhile, In a Feb. 25 meeting of the House Appropriations Committee’s energy and water subcommittee, Rep Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the subcommittee chair said that she would support a task force to look into options for waste disposal, adding that she was “tired of the issue.”
