ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The White House does not plan to request any funding in fiscal 2021 for licensing the nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., issue experts said at an industry conference here Tuesday.
That would reverse the Trump administration’s efforts in its last three budget proposals to persuade Congress to appropriate money to restart the long-frozen licensing proceeding at the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All three attempts died on Capitol Hill.
“I don’t think this is a state secret, but the administration’s fiscal year 2021 budget … I’m told reliably, will including nothing for the Yucca Mountain construction, presumably because they realize they don’t want pushing rocks up hill,” Mike McBride, a partner at the law firm Van Ness Feldman, said during a panel discussion at the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management’s 35th Spent Fuel Management Seminar.
The White House is scheduled on Feb. 10 to issue its spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.
“The budget will be released on 2/10. We won’t be announcing the details of what is or isn’t in the budget until then,” an administration official said by email Tuesday. A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the agency could also not discuss its upcoming budget, while the Energy Department did not respond to a query.
“This is just a recognition of the reality in 2020 leading up to the election,” McBride said. “This is not giving up on the project. This is just a near-term dose of political reality.”
