The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday voted almost unanimously in favor of promoting Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes to the No. 2 position at the Department of Energy.
In the panel’s voice vote, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) raised the sole objection to advancing Menezes toward confirmation as deputy secretary of energy by the full Senate. While Cortez Masto has regularly tangled with Energy Department officials over plans for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, her opposition here stemmed from reports that the Trump administration has discussed resuming explosive testing of nuclear weapons.
In her statement for the record, Cortez Masto noted that the then-Nevada Test Site was used for over 900 atmospheric and underground nuclear tests from 1945 to 1992.
“There has been a changing tide in the Administration on Yucca Mountain, and I believe [Energy Secretary Dan] Brouillette has played an important role in improving our communications with the Department, but these recent events only suggest that the Department still has work to do to earn back the trust of Nevadans,” Cortez Masto stated. “I look forward to receiving assurances that Nevada will not be used, once again, for explosive nuclear testing.”
There was no immediate word on when the Senate might consider Menezes’ nomination, but committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she hopes he would “draw strong bipartisan support and that we’ll be able to confirm him quickly once his nomination reaches the Senate floor.”
Ahead of the vote, both Murkowski and committee Ranking Member Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) highlighted Menezes’ experience at the Energy Department and on Capitol Hill.
Menezes has served as undersecretary of energy since November 2017, the department’s lead adviser on energy policy and energy technologies. He is one of three DOE undersecretaries, the position directly below deputy secretary on the department’s organization chart. After Brouillette in December 2019 moved up from deputy to lead the department, he invested Menezes with authority to make decisions on nearly all DOE activities, not including the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
His previous experience included a three-year stint, from 2003 to 2006, as chief counsel for energy and environment at the House Energy and Commerce Committee, then as a partner at the law firm Hunton & Williams. Immediately prior to joining the Energy Department, he was an executive with Berkshire Hathaway Energy, the corporate owner for power companies around the nation.
During the committee’s May 20 confirmation hearing, Cortez Masto pressed Menezes to affirm that the Energy Department would no longer pursue plans for permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel under Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
“Let me be very clear about this. The president has been very clear on this: The administration will not be pursuing Yucca Mountain as a solution for nuclear waste, and I am fully supportive of the president’s decision and applaud him for taking action when so many others have failed to do so,” Menezes responded.
That represented a turnaround from prior Trump administration policy and prior comments from Menezes on the topic.
Congress in 1982 put the Energy Department in charge of final disposition of the radioactive waste, a stockpile that now stands at about 100,000 metric tons. The agency in 2008 filed its application for the Yucca Mountain repository with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, during the George W. Bush administration, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later.
There has been effectively no movement for a decade, despite the Obama DOE’s short-lived efforts to stand up a new “consent-based” process for siting separate disposal sites for defense and commercial waste. After taking office in January 2017, President Donald Trump proposed funding to resume licensing for Yucca Mountain in three successive budget plans. Congress shot that down each time.
For the upcoming fiscal 2021, the Energy Department is instead requesting $27.5 million for an Interim Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight program. That money would cover early work such as preparing initial design concepts for a facility to consolidate radioactive waste and beginning the siting process.
Menezes briefly got sideways of the administration’s new position on Feb. 12, when he told a House subcommittee that the then-days old budget plan was intended to provide a “path toward permanent storage at Yucca.” Both Menezes and the Energy Department quickly issued statements retreating from that comment, and he was nominated as deputy secretary in March.
“While I enjoyed my conversations with the Under Secretary leading up to his nomination hearing and appreciated his clarification of the Administration’s position that it will no longer pursue Yucca Mountain as the nation’s permanent nuclear waste disposal site, our state has been brought into yet another nuclear issue that involves the Department of Energy,” Cortez Masto said in her statement for the record, referring to the potential for nuclear-explosive testing.
The United States has since 1992 sustained an informal moratorium on nuclear testing, instead employing other means under the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan to ensure the arsenal remains functional.
However, The Washington Post reported on May 22 that administration officials had a week earlier discussed possible resumption of explosive testing, as a potential means to prod China and Russia into new trilateral arms control talks. The following week, a Department of Defense official told reporters that the NNSA could be ready in a matter of months to conduct an underground test.
That possibility has drawn strenuous objections from Democrats on Capitol Hill, including demands from the leaders of the House Armed Services and Appropriations committees for written information and a briefing on the matter by June 25 from the Departments of Defense and Energy.
During the May 20 nomination hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Cortez Masto also asked Menezes for a status update on an overdue report on nuclear-waste storage required from the Energy Department in appropriations legislation passed by Congress in December. That report, demanded within 90 days of the bill’s enactment, must address “innovative options for disposition of high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel management,” specifically those that are cost-effective, possible over the short term, and ensure engagement with stakeholders.
Cortez Masto’s office did not respond to a query this week on whether she had been updated on the status of the report. The Energy Department also did not respond to a query on the report or its position on the potential resumption of nuclear testing.
