Reps. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Feb. 10 toured the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California while discussing solutions for managing American nuclear waste.
Shimkus, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which holds congressional jurisdiction over nuclear waste management, has long voiced his support for the planned repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Committee members have refused to consider nuclear waste legislation that does not address the site, while railing against the Obama administration for failing to adhere to the amended Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which designated Yucca Mountain as the sole site for permanent nuclear waste storage. President Barack Obama canceled the project in 2010, and his administration subsequently pursued a “consent-based” strategy for separate storage of commercial and defense wasate.
Issa, whose district includes SONGS, has been seeking a solution for removing some 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste from the shuttered plant, which sits along the Pacific coastline. SONGS is one of about 100 U.S. nuclear sites with stranded nuclear waste. The lawmaker recently introduced the Interim Consolidated Storage Act, which would allow the Department of Energy to enter into public-private contracts for storage of certain high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel, using expenditures from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund. Issa introduced the legislation with cosponsors including Rep. Mike Conway (R-Texas), whose district includes a potential interim storage site that Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists plans to build and operate.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is unlikely to consider Issa’s legislation, according to a panel aide, because it would directly compete with efforts to restart work on Yucca Mountain.
“By bringing other lawmakers to our district, to educate and allow them to see the problems we face here locally, it’s my hope we can inspire action and the buy-in we need to advance a solution,” Issa said in a statement. “In Congress, I’ll continue working on common-sense solutions to nuclear storage that ensure the federal government upholds the promise it made to ratepayers and gets this waste safely, and securely removed from our communities as quickly as possible.
Shimkus, in his own statement, cited the more than $30 billion in liabilities that American taxpayers have borne as a result of DOE’s failure to take title to the waste, resulting from DOE breaking nuclear waste disposal agreements from the 1980s as repository plans have remained stalled at Yucca Mountain.
“This number will continue to rapidly increase until the federal government fulfills its promise to local communities and ratepayers to permanently dispose of this material,” said Shimkus, who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee. “I will continue to push for a comprehensive solution to nuclear waste management that would move spent nuclear fuel out of these communities in a timely manner and toward permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain, as decided by the federal government thirty years ago.”
