The U.S. senators from Nevada on Tuesday urged the Trump administration’s nominees for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to be fair in their consideration of licensing for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
“We recognize that the nominees considered before the Committee today have a history and record of strongly supporting moving forward with the Yucca Mountain repository. We remain hopeful that the nominees, if confirmed, approach this issue without any pre-existing bias and conflicts of interest,” Sens. Dean Heller (R) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D) said in a joint statement to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ahead of its confirmation hearing Tuesday for current NRC Chair Kristine Svinicki and new nominees Annie Caputo and David Wright.
The issue of Yucca Mountain did not come up during the hearing itself. Heller and Cortez Masto are not members of the EPW panel, but said they intend to discuss the matter at some point with all three nominees.
The Trump administration budget plan for fiscal 2018 would provide $110 million for the Department of Energy and $30 million for the NRC to resume the licensing process for Yucca Mountain, which the Obama administration canceled in 2010. Nevada’s congressional delegation has overwhelmingly opposed reviving the project, which if built would store tens of thousands of tons of U.S. spent fuel and high-level waste.
Heller and Cortez Masto this year co-sponsored the Senate version of the Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act, which would require DOE to obtain written approval from the governor and other state stakeholders before building a nuclear waste repository. The bill is now before the Environment and Public Works Committee.
The panel is scheduled to vote Thursday on Svinicki’s nomination, and at a later date on Caputo and Wright.
In the House, Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) urged the Senate to reject Wright’s nomination for what she called “his long history of pushing the Yucca Mountain agenda.” Wright, an energy consultant and former member of the South Carolina Public Service Commission, has written commentaries and testified before Congress in support of Yucca Mountain.
