The final version of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which now needs only Senate approval and a presidential signature to become law, authorized no funding to send high-level nuclear waste generated by U.S. defense programs to the long-planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada.
Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) quickly claimed credit for the lack of a defense nuclear waste authorization. The Silver State’s senior senator had his statement ready to go on Monday, days before the House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to send the 2019 NDAA conference report along to the Senate. The upper chamber could vote next week on the defense policy bill, which covers Department of Energy defense nuclear activities, for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
“Once again, I was able to work to kill efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives to bring nuclear waste to Nevada,” Heller wrote in a statement uploaded to his website.
Since the Donald Trump administration decided to resume licensing for the dual-use, civil-military Yucca Mountain waste facility, there has been little talk of a separate disposal path for Department of Energy-owned defense nuclear waste. The Barack Obama administration recommended creating separate facilities for commercial and defense waste, claiming it would be cheaper and quicker than the controversial Yucca Mountain.
The White House sought $30 million for defense nuclear waste disposal in fiscal 2019. The waste would go to Yucca, if the repository is ever built. Congress in 1987 designated the Nye County, Nev., site to permanently house tens of thousands of tons of U.S. nuclear waste, but the repository has yet to be licensed much less built.
So far, prospects are dim. The administration last year requested funding to restart the Department of Energy’s application to license Yucca with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but Congress did not go along with the plan. The House has backed restarting Yucca — which the Barack Obama administration defunded in 2011 — but the Senate remains opposed.
With a fragile 51-49 majority, and Heller up for re-election this year in a state Hillary Clinton carried in the 2016 election, Senate leadership has been wary of letting Yucca legislation anywhere near the Senate floor.
For fiscal 2019, House appropriators recommended $270 million for Yucca between DOE and NRC, while the Senate again recommended no funding for the mountain. The Energy Department’s 2019 appropriations bill is part of a so-called minibus package that still needs final approval by the House and Senate. Bicameral conference negotiations were derailed July 12 and have not been rescheduled.
Now, with the House out of town for its August recess, the 2019 DOE budget will languish in legislative limbo until after Labor Day — and Yucca Mountain along with it.
Meanwhile, Heller has dependable help from the other side of the aisle when it comes to pummelling the executive branch about Yucca Mountain.
Last week, NRC Chair Kristine Svinicki continued her correspondence with Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who since the spring has pressed the commission about the steps it is taking to secure hearing space in Nevada for any eventual Yucca licensing procedures.
In a July 19 letter published Thursday by the NRC, Svinicki said the agency has not talked to officials in Nye County about leasing local hearing space since April.
