Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the Senate’s lead appropriator for the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commisson, announced this week that he will leave the Senate after 2020.
Alexander chairs the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, in which capacity he is the gatekeeper for upper chamber funding of a host of programs incluidng management of the nation’s radioactive waste. He has held the gavel there since 2015.
Should Republicans retain control of the Senate following the 2020 elections, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) are tied for seniority on the full Appropriations Committee, among panel members who do not already chair one of its 12 subcommittees. Of the pair, only Kennedy serves on the energy and water subcommittee now.
Alexander’s subcommittee drew up the Senate’s first draft of a nearly $44 billion energy and water funding bill for fiscal 2019 that notably included no money for DOE’s planned Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository in Nevada. The Senate stuck to that zero throughout its budget process, in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s request for $170 million and the House proposal to give DOE and the NRC $270 million to resume licensing on the project. The upper chamber won the day in the budget bill signed into law in September.
That was more or less a replay of the prior budget process, when the administration wanted nearly $150 million for Yucca licensing and got nothing.
Alexander has made clear he is not opposed to the Nevada repository — just this week he spearheaded a foiled effort to provide $60 million for licensing, split between the NRC and DOE. However, in appropriations and legislation, his focus has emphasized nearer-term, interim storage of radioactive waste.
The United States holds tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel from commercial power plants and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. The Department of Energy is already more than two decades beyond its Jan. 31, 1998, legal deadline to begin taking that waste for disposal.
The Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2013, which Alexander co-sponsored with four colleagues, called for establishing a stand-alone agency for nuclear waste management that would develop a consent-based program for consolidated, interim storage of used fuel and defense waste. That bill did not make it out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
A largely identical bill filed in 2015 by Alexander died in the same committee during the next Congress.
Alexander has openly discussed making another attempt, by has yet to do so. A spokesman this week did not respond to requests for details regarding the senator’s legislative plans.
Alexander has indicated he plans to remain as chairman of the Appropriations energy and water panel. Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is also expected to stay on.
The former two-term Tennessee governor, 78, has served in the Senate since 2003. Previous jobs included secretary of education during the George H.W. Bush administration and president of the University of Tennessee.
