By John Stang
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) is leading a dozen U.S. House members on a tour of the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada on Saturday in hopes of bolstering his case to revive stalled plans for a nuclear waste repository there. Nevada leaders quickly criticized the trip as flawed because no local interests will be represented on that tour.
Accompanying Shimkus will be Reps. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Joe Barton (R-Texas), Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.), David Valadao (R-Calif.), Don Norcross (D-N.J.), Steve Womack (R-Ark.), Jeff Duncan, (R-S.C.), Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), and Mark Sanford (R-S.C.). They will be joined by officials from the Department of Energy including Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes, Politico reported.
The last congressional visit to Yucca Mountain, in the desert about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, was in 2015.
The upcoming trip is generally intended to persuade members of Congress to support pushing ahead with the Yucca Mountain project. “[T]he purpose of the visit is to walk the grounds and get an appreciation of the site,” Shimkus told Politico. His office referred RadWaste Monitor to a Nevada Independent article for information on the upcoming tour.
Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain as the eventual site for an underground repository for the nation’s defense and commercial nuclear waste, primarily tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. Initial tunnels have been built, but the project has yet to advance further and still has no license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The George W. Bush administration Department of Energy filed its license application with the NRC in 2008, but the Obama administration halted licensing efforts two years later. The Trump administration has sought renewed Yucca funding at DOE and the NRC, but Congress has yet to cooperate: The House has gotten behind the project, while the Senate remains firmly opposed.
On May 10, the House voted 340-72 in favor of Shimkus’ Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, which contains a host of measures aimed at strengthening the federal government’s ability to build the repository. All lawmakers going on the tour Saturday voted for the bill, while Nevada’s four House members voted against it.
The bill is now in the Senate, where it faces heavy opposition led by Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.). There are no senators on Shimkus’ Saturday tour. Also, no Nevada congressional members or state officials are scheduled to attend. Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.) was interested in joining the tour, but had a scheduling conflict, Shimkus wrote in a letter Thursday to Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.).
Titus and Rep Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) both declined invitations from Shimkus to attend the tour, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Titus, whose district includes part of Las Vegas, told the Nevada Independent: “There’s nothing to see since they’ve been there before. I think it’s just a junket to have a weekend in my district and have fun.”
In a letter Wednesday to Shimkus, Kihuen, Titus, and Rosen said: “We find it irresponsible that no state-level stakeholders from Nevada were invited to attend the tour. Like the vast majority of Nevadans, we firmly oppose any attempt to turn our state into the nation’s nuclear waste dump. However, if Members of Congress are going to tour the proposed Yucca Mountain repository site, it is important that they hear from individuals knowledgeable of the science and technical issues of the project. We therefore formally request that you invite state-level stakeholders with geological and scientific expertise to attend the upcoming site visit.”
Rosen is campaigning for Heller’s Senate seat. Both fiercely oppose the Yucca Mountain project.
Earlier this week, Judy Treichel, executive director of the anti-Yucca Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, asked Shimkus’ office for permission to join Saturday’s tour. Shimkus responded Thursday by letter: “Your interest in visiting the Yucca Mountain site is recognized; however, logistical issues limit participation for the tour.”
In his letter to Titus, Shimkus said he tried without success tried to get Republican Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Nevada’s state agencies to talk to Congress about the Yucca Mountain project.
In a statement Thursday, Robert Halstead, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, countered that Shimkus knows the Nevada’s congressional delegation has been acting as the Nevada government’s official agents to Congress on this matter, and that the state agencies have submitted written comments on the Yucca legislation.
