Sens. Catherin Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) last week reintroduced a bill to prohibit the Department of Energy from siting a nuclear-waste disposal facility without the consent of state governments.
The latest version of the Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act was introduced a little under a week before Donald Trump (R) was sworn in as President for a second term. It is a version of a bill that died on the vine late in Trump’s first term and which members of Nevada’s congressional delegation filed near the start of it.
Republicans control the 119th Congress and the Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act did not get a vote in the 118th Congress, when Democrats had the majority.
Cortez Masto and Rosen reintroduced the bill a day after Christ Wright, Trump’s secretary of energy-designate, declined at his confirmation hearing to say that he would abandon the possibility of storing high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev. Cortez Masto subsequently voted this week against sending Wright’s nomination to the full Senate. She was one of five Democrats on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to oppose the nomination.
During his first reelection bid, which he eventually lost to Joe Biden, Trump himself publicly halted his attempt to build a repository at Yucca, which is still the sole congressionally authorized site for one in the U.S.
