An expansive nuclear-waste bill unveiled in the House of Representatives this week would strip away some of Nevada’s legal tools for resisting the moribund Yucca Mountain geologic repository the Donald Trump administration wants to resurrect.
Among many other things, the highly nuanced, 45-page Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017 would if signed into law curtail Nevada’s ability to regulate air and water quality at Yucca Mountain — tactics the state has used before to slow DOE’s progress at the federally owned site.
The bill also would give DOE the right to use any of the federally owned land on which Yucca sits that the agency does not already control, plus permission to build any needed infrastructure there even before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issues a license to operate the mountain as a waste repository.
The bill would also order DOE to postpone plans for a separate deep-underground repository for nuclear waste created by nuclear weapons programs, and by June 1, 2019, to draw up a plan for moving civilian nuclear waste out of U.S. power plants and into temporary storage facilities — a potential boon for a pair of private companies, Holtec International of Burlington County, N.J., and Waste Control Specialists, of Dallas, which have sought permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to store spent nuclear fuel and other high-level waste.
Waste Control Specialists, citing the expense of the process and costly antitrust litigation related to its proposed acquisition by EnergySolutions, of Salt Lake City, this week asked the NRC to suspend — but not cancel — its review of the company’s interim storage license application.
Meanwhile, a former Energy official who helmed the agency’s Yucca Mountain office for nearly a decade praised the new nuclear waste bill, but said it is merely the first step in a long policy slog that could take half of President Donald Trump’s first term to resolve.
“This will be a complicated messy process, but I am optimistic that with a two-or-so-year time frame, a bipartisan bill can be created,” Lake Barrett, the former head of DOE’s defunct Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, wrote in a Wednesday email to RadWaste Monitor. The office Barrett led would be restored as a direct report to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, if the new bill passes.
In the meantime, Barrett said, “many of the items contained in the draft [bill] need to be discussed and modified within the federal legislative area and within the host states and communities.”
The discussion is set to open at 10 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday, when the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee will hold a hearing on the new bill. The committee, which will webcast the hearing, had not identified any witnesses at press time for RadWaste Monitor.
The Trump administration has proposed spending $120 million in fiscal 2018 to resume DOE’s Yucca Mountain license application with the NRC, and to jump-start interim storage sites. The Obama administration suspended the Yucca Mountain license application in 2010 but had supported interim storage as part of its consent-based siting program for nuclear waste.
Although the new bill is still in draft form and does not list any sponsors, the proposal includes much of the legislative heavy lifting Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) vowed to put in the comprehensive nuclear-waste bill he has been working on since Congress convened in January.
Shimkus has said he wants the House to pass his bill to pass before lawmakers leave town for their monthlong August recess.
Higher up on the House’s list of legislative priorities are must-pass federal spending bills, the first of which lawmakers will have to hash out next week to prevent a government shutdown after April 28. After that, Congress will turn its attention to the budget for the 2018 federal fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
Meanwhile, lawmakers from and in Nevada remain resolute in their opposition to Yucca.
During Congress’ two-week spring recess, which draws to a close next week, Nevada’s U.S. Sens. Dean Heller (R) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D) each issued scathing rebukes to the Trump administration over its plans to revive Yucca.
“I’m standing between this Republican administration and Yucca, and I will lead this fight,” Heller told members of the Nevada Legislature on Monday. “We will not be run over by the desires of East Coast states that want to move the nuclear waste they created out of their backyards and into ours.”
Nevada has no nuclear reactors of its own. The 77,000 tons of nuclear waste Yucca is designed to store would all come from out of state.
Cortez Masto tweeted her opposition Wednesday.
Yucca Mountain is nothing more than a hole in the ground & state of NV will do everything to stop this ill-conceived project. #AskCatherine
— Senator Cortez Masto (@SenCortezMasto) April 19, 2017
Cortez Masto, a newcomer to the Senate who last year won the seat vacated by famed anti-Yucca crusader Harry Reid, has gotten her hands dirty in the Yucca fight before. In 2007, as Nevada’s attorney general, Cortez Masto quarterbacked a court fight against DOE in which the state successfully argued the agency was using Nevada’s water for unauthorized construction at Yucca and was not entitled to court protection to keep doing so.
Nevada’s Legislature is also advancing a resolution that would make the state’s well-established opposition to the repository legally official. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R), himself an ardent Yucca critic, supports the measure, as does the state’s current attorney general, Adam Paul Laxalt.
Nevada’s strategy for stalling Yucca has centered around the argument that DOE should not be working on the site before the NRC approves the agency’s license application. The tactic manifested itself in the 2007 court battle over water rights, and in the late 1980s when Nevada balked at issuing DOE an air-quality permit the agency said it needed. States ordinarily have a role in enforcing even federal environmental regulations.
The House’s new waste bill does include some olive branches for Nevada, including a recommendation that any waste transported to Yucca from out of state should, “to the extent practicable, avoid Las Vegas, Nevada.”
Barrett, Washington’s former Yucca czar, said he hoped the new bill will evolve to “include some negotiated resolution of the State of Nevada’s issues.”
“This is a good start,” Barrett wrote. “However, a long and complicated road is ahead.”
