The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday rolled out and quickly passed energy and water development legislation that would again give nothing for licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.
Instead, the $48.9 billion Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for fiscal 2020 would provide funding for a pilot program for consolidated storage of nuclear waste and for the Department of Energy to send such material to commercial facilities licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
That language is in keeping with the preference of the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee that wrote the bill. Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have made clear for years they view centralized interim storage as an expedited method for the Energy Department to meet its legal mandate to deal with used fuel from nuclear power plants.
The energy and water bill went straight to a markup before the committee, without stopping at Alexander’s subcommittee. It now awaits action by the full Senate after a 31-0 up vote from the Appropriations Committee.
“Given the Democratic control of the House, I’m hopeful that this is the year Congress will finally break the stalemate on dealing with nuclear waste,” Feinstein said in a statement after the vote.
The panel also advanced its fiscal 2020 defense bill on a 16-15 party-line vote, with Republicans supporting and Democrats opposed. No other appropriations measures have yet been taken up in committee.
There was no immediate word on when the full Senate would consider the bills, with just a handful of working days left before the next budget year begins on Oct. 1. Leaders in Congress have acknowledged that some sort of short-term budget resolution will be necessary to keep the federal government fully open starting that day. The House is due next week to vote on a stopgap spending bill through Nov. 21, The Hill reported.
The vote Thursday almost certainly assures the Trump administration will strike out in a third budget cycle in its efforts to persuade Congress to appropriate money to resume licensing of the Yucca Mountain disposal facility.
The White House requested $116 million in fiscal 2020 for Yucca Mountain and interim storage activities at the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All but about $6 million of that would have been for licensing. The House in June instead approved an energy appropriations bill with $47.5 million for integrated management of radioactive waste, with $25 million directed for activities to prepare for consolidated interim storage.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act put the Energy Department on the hook to by Jan. 31, 1998, begin disposal of what is now about 100,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. More than 21 years past that deadline, that material remains stored throughout more than 30 states.
Congress amended the 1982 legislation five years later to direct that the waste be buried under federal land about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department in 2008 filed its construction and operations license for the Nevada facility with the NRC, only to have President Barack Obama defund the entire proceeding not long after taking office in 2009. On the advice of a blue-ribbon commission of experts, the Obama administration later initiated a “consent-based” approach to site separate repositories for commercial and defense waste. That program was still in its infancy when Donald Trump assumed the presidency in January 2017 and turned back to Yucca Mountain.
The Republican-controlled House supported licensing funding requests for fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019, but ran up against the Senate’s antipathy to Yucca Mountain. In those years, the chambers of Congress compromised by appropriating no money for either temporary storage or permanent disposal of radioactive waste.
Democrats retook the House majority in the November 2018, and with it the reins on appropriations for the lower chamber. Republicans made a couple efforts earlier this year to put money for Yucca Mountain into the House’s 2020 energy spending bill, but with no success.
The Senate bill in total would provide just over $39 billion for the Department of Energy, $7.5 billion above the administration’s request.
It would authorize the secretary of energy to establish a pilot program for licensing, construction, and operation of one or more federal facilities for consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive fuel now stranded at shuttered nuclear sites.
The Energy Department would have 120 days after the bill became law to release a request for proposals for contracts covering obtaining NRC licenses for one or more storage sigte; demonstrating safe transport of the waste; and demonstrating safe storage of the material until the permanent deep-geological repository is ready.
The agency would then have another 120 days to send a plan to Capitol Hill featuring an annual cost projection to license, build, and run the storage facility, along with a schedule stretching from licensing to decommissioning. Siting any facility would require agreement in writing from the impacted state, local government, and Indian tribes.
Costs for the program would be paid through the Nuclear Waste Fund, the federal account intended to pay for the permanent repository.
In its report for the bill, the committee recommended $22.5 million for integrated nuclear waste management.
“Funding is recommended to implement plans to consolidate spent nuclear fuel from around the United States to one or more private or government interim central storage facilities,” the report says. “Priority shall be given to accepting spent nuclear fuel from shutdown reactors, and to accelerating the development of a transportation capability to move spent fuel from its current storage locations.”
The Energy Department, under the bill, could direct as much as $10 million for management of that material, including via a private interim storage provider.
Queried on Thursday, the White House did not comment on the Senate bill.
The Senate committee language goes hand-in-hand with the intent of the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019, which Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced on April 30 with co-sponsors Alexander and Feinstein. That bill is an updated version of legislation that failed twice in the last decade. It would, among other measures, set up a pilot storage program and require siting consent from affected governmental bodies.
A spokesman for strongly pro-Yucca Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) noted that Alexander said earlier this year he hoped for a Senate floor vote “to determine if Yucca Mountain is safe or not so we can resolve that issue.”
“I think folks who follow this issue, Congressman Shimkus included, wonder if the senator will follow through with a floor amendment to add funds to resume the licensing process,” Shimkus spokesman Jordan Haverly said by email.
Both Alexander and Shimkus do not plan to seek re-election in 2020.
Two corporate teams have applied for Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses for interim storage of used fuel. Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of nuclear company Orano and disposal provider Waste Control Specialists, is seeking a 40-year license for a facility in West Texas with a maximum capacity of 40,000 metric tons of material. Just across the state border in southeastern New Mexico, energy technology firm Holtec International wants a 40-year license for a site able to store more than 100,000 metric tons of fuel assemblies. Both companies say they could open their facilities by the early 2020s, years if not decades earlier than Yucca Mountain – assuming it is ever funded, licensed, and overcomes deep opposition from Nevada’s state and federal leaders.
“We appreciate that the House and now the Senate recognize the importance of a consolidated storage facility to address the nuclear waste issue,” Holtec said in a statement Friday. “We will continue to monitor the progress of this bill as it goes through the legislative process.”
While he pointedly did not offer an amendment on the bill during the markup, Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) briefly reaffirmed his “serious questions” about interim storage. Among the concerns Udall has raised in recent years are the potential for interim storage to become permanent if the federal government fails to build its repository.
Udall noted that New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has taken a strong stand against the Holtec project. That is a reversal from her predecessor, Susana Martinez (R), but Lujan Grisham says the facility could threaten the state’s crucial agriculture and energy industries. Holtec says its underground storage system is engineered to prevent any radiation release.
