Nevada’s congressional delegation is refreshing its opposition to building a nuclear waste repository in their state ahead of the imminent rollout of the White House’s next budget proposal.
The Trump administration is expected to issue its fiscal 2020 spending plan on or around March 12, delayed several weeks by the recent partial shutdown of the federal government.
Congress has already shot down the administration’s requests in the two last budget years to provide money for the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume the long-frozen licensing of the underground disposal site at Yucca Mountain. While the White House has kept mum on the matter, nuclear industry representatives have said they expect another request for the federal fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
“[I]ncluding funding for this project would be throwing good money after bad. Unless and until we reform the process for the siting of nuclear waste repositories, any funding put towards the Yucca Mountain licensing process is a waste of time and resources,” Reps. Dina Titus, Steven Horsford, and Susie Lee (all D-Nev.) stated Thursday in a letter to President Donald Trump.
The three lawmakers reminded Trump that he said in October he “would be very inclined to be against” burying radioactive waste under the federal property about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Trump made the comment during a campaign swing through Nevada for then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who the next month was defeated by Rep. Jacky Rosen (D).
The White House and the Department of Energy since then have not publicly discussed whether alternatives to Yucca Mountain are being considered. The Energy Department did not respond by deadline Friday to a query on Trump’s comments and its next budget.
Congress in 1982 directed DOE to by Jan. 31, 1998, begin accepting U.S. spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations for disposal, and five years later mandated that the repository be built at Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department submitted its license application for the facility to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later.
Nevada’s leadership has long opposed bringing the waste – now at about 100,000 metric tons, well above Yucca Mountain’s current statutory limit of 70,000 metric tons – into their state. The Obama administration initiated a “consent-based” approach for repository siting, but Trump administration turned back to Nevada upon taking office in January 2017.
The White House for fiscal 2018 proposed nearly $150 million at DOE and the NRC for nuclear waste management activities, nearly all of it for licensing Yucca Mountain. After getting blanked by Congress, it came back with a $170 million request for the current fiscal 2018 that was also ultimately zeroed out on Capitol Hill.
In both cases, the House supported the administration request – even adding $100 million to the fiscal 2019 ask. The Senate, though, was opposed and won the day in the final budgets.
There have been signs of an opening for Yucca backers in the upper chamber. In January, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) tweeted that he favored advancing all options for spent fuel management, including Yucca Mountain and interim storage.
Alexander chairs the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, which writes the chamber’s first draft of budget bills covering DOE and the NRC. In recent years, the panel has pressed to fund shorter-term storage approaches to consolidate spent fuel in a limited number of temporary locations.
Alexander was scheduled today to lead a delegation of his colleagues to the Yucca Mountain site. However, the trip was canceled due to scheduling conflicts.
In the initial announcement, Alexander’s office said the visit was “part of his ongoing effort to help solve the nuclear waste stalemate so nuclear power has a future in our country and continues to provide carbon-free electricity.”
Last week, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) confirmed she would join the congressional delegation to Yucca, but in clear opposition to the project.
“I’ll be going to Yucca Mountain to help educate my colleagues about how the project is misguided & dangerous, & cost taxpayers $19 billion with nothing to show for it,” Cortez Masto tweeted on Feb. 22. “I’m bringing Nevadans’ voices with me & I will keep fighting any effort to store nuclear waste in our backyards.”
IEA Chief Downplays Role of Spent Fuel in Nuclear Power Troubles
The United States’ long inability to find a permanent disposal site for spent fuel from its nuclear power reactors is less harmful to the domestic industry than regulatory and cost burdens, the head of the International Energy Agency said Thursday.
Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, appeared before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to discuss the Paris-based organization’s latest World Energy Outlook.
During the hearing, and a press conference that morning with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Birol said the United States was in danger of being overtaken by China in the next decade as the world’s No. 1 nuclear power producer.
A number of nuclear plants have shut down or been scheduled for early retirement in recent years. That undermines efforts to curb carbon emissions from power production, Birol told the committee.
Across the board, nuclear plant owners have said the economics of operating large, expensive facilities no longer make sense, particularly against the challenge of power produced far cheaper by natural gas. They have looked to state and federal governments to help prop up their facilities.
“Is the reason for that because of our inability to dispose safely of the waste, is that what’s holding us back, or is it basically we’re just not promoting because of cost ineffectiveness of new nuclear reactors?” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) asked Birol.
He responded: “I would say the second one. … You have lots of very tough regulations in this country. It’s very good to have safety concerns, it’s very good to have prepared measures, but it is mainly the cost issue today. Gas is very cheap, natural gas, renewables are becoming cheaper and cheaper. We have difficulties under the very heavy pressure of those existing regulations for nuclear to be profitable.”
That was the only discussion of power plant-generated radioactive waste during the hearing. The topic did also not come up during the earlier press availability, though Perry did announce a Versatile Test Reactor program intended to promote nuclear power through expedited testing of advanced nuclear fuels, materials, and systems.
