The Nevada agency charged with leading the fight against the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in the state has launched a new salvo, this time against federal legislation aimed at advancing the project.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017, introduced last June by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), has a number of negative ramifications for Nevada, and is built on an unsound financial plan, according to a nine-page analysis distributed on Jan. 19 to the state’s congressional delegation by Robert Halstead, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
“H.R. 3053 would restart the forced siting of a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. H.R. 3053 would constitute and expedite the primary provision of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987 … which designated Yucca Mountain as the only candidate site to be studied for a geologic repository,” according to the document, which Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) made public on Jan. 26.
Shimkus has long been a proponent of Yucca Mountain as the answer to the question of where to put tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste stockpiled at nuclear power plants and other locations around the country. Leaders in Nevada, meanwhile, have strenuously objected to their home becoming the repository for other states’ nuclear waste.
The repository has made scant progress over the last three decades toward being licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and then built. H.R. 3053 features a number of provisions aimed at jump-starting the process, including giving DOE land and water rights around the site in Nye County, Nev. It also sets up the process for establishing a site for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel until the permanent repository is ready.
The bill has 109 co-sponsors (including 21 Democrats) and passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a strongly bipartisan 49-4 vote within days of being introduced. However, Shimkus’ legislation has not yet gotten a floor vote in the House. There was no update Friday on its outlook.
Among the bill’s implications, for Nevada and beyond, according to Halstead:
- The legislation, as amended, sets a cap of 110,000 metric tons of waste that could be emplaced in the first repository before a second disposal site opens. That is up from 70,000 metric tons and “indicates that Congress could further revise upward or completely eliminate the capacity limit at any time.”
- The legislation undoes the ban in the 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act against interim storage of nuclear waste in Nevada. State leaders worry the material could be shipped to Nevada for surface storage, then left there without underground disposal being built.
- The legislation would give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 30 months following passage to rule on the DOE application to build the repository, but the regulator could seemingly request a one-year extension.
- The legislation would not force the Energy Department to establish transportation routes that stay away from Las Vegas, instead saying that should be the goal “to the extent practicable.”
Halstead used several pages of his report to lay out what he sees as deep financial flaws with the Shimkus bill: “Close examination reveals no basis for concluding that H.R. 3053 would establish a workable mechanism for funding the high-level nuclear waste program for the first ten years after enactment, or over the 120-130 year operating life of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository.”
While the committee report for the bill says Nevada would receive close to $4 billion in assistance over the life of the project, Halstead wrote, the legislation does not account for inflation and so the actual value would be less.
The federal Nuclear Waste Fund, accrued from fees on nuclear utilities that were halted under court order in 2014, has a current balance of roughly $37 billion to pay for Yucca Mountain, according to the committee report. But the 1 percent annual allocation for DOE, $370 million, would begin only after licensing and (with inflation) would not cover 25 years of construction and operations, according to Halstead. Even if and when utility payments resume, DOE on average would need to request $1.3 billion in annual appropriations beyond the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the project, according to the analysis.
In a statement to RadWaste Monitor, Titus said the Nevada report highlights the problems with building the nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain. She said she shared the analysis with the House Appropriations and Energy committees.
“My position is unchanged: Republicans can barely fund our government let alone come up with some $100 billion to pay for Yucca Mountain,” Titus said. “It’s time for a new solution that requires consent from any affected state.”
A Shimkus spokesman on Jan. 26 said the congressman’s office was reviewing the Halstead report. There was no update on the matter from the office this week.
H.R. 3053 did have a defender this week in the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that represents state public service commissions.
“A recent proposal authored by Rep. Shimkus includes crucial provisions to assure that the NWF corpus is returned. More importantly, one key provision assures that if ratepayer fee collections are ever restarted, Congress cannot misdirect the collected fees to other unrelated projects,” NARUC said in a statement highlighting the 20th anniversary of the date — Jan. 31, 1998 — at which DOE was supposed to begin accepting nuclear waste for disposal.
