Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) is bidding farewell to Congress after a more than 20 year stint as an Illinois representative, and he says Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) could be one of the congressmen to replace him as the lower chamber’s main advocate for a permanent nuclear-waste disposal site.
Shimkus credited Duncan for helping secure the $600 million settlement the federal government paid to South Carolina this year to end the state’s years-long lawsuit over the Department of Energy’s failure to remove many metric tons of weapon-usable plutonium from the South Carolina beginning in 2016, as required by law.
“’I’m pretty happy with the state of South Carolina, and Jeff carried that mantle,” Shimkus said. Duncan’s district borders the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., where DOE stores the plutonium at issue in the lawsuit.
In a virtual Tuesday question-and-answer session at Illinois Tech, an address that will be among his last as a sitting member of Congress, Shimkus said politics and localism have ultimately blocked plans for Yucca Mountain, the permanent spent fuel disposal site he spent much of his career rallying and advocating for.
The Department of Energy’s Hanford site in Washington state is one example of how policies like Yucca Mountain can serve the interests of environmentalists. Tankfuls of liquid radioactive waste stored underground on a site that abuts the Columbia River are a “major problem,” he said.
Shimkus talked about his work planning the Yucca Mountain facility with Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who was a member of Congress before being elected governor of Washington state in 2012.
Before Inslee became governor, Shimkus said the two were good friends, calling Inslee “his right hand man.” As a member of Congress In 2011, Inslee voted in favor of moving forward with Yucca Mountain. Later, he walked back that stance.
“He probably still believes that it needs to move there,” said Shimkus. “But I think he got caught up in presidential politics and didn’t want to, you know, get the Nevada democrats matted. So he walked away, unfortunately.”
Shimkus said Hanford is “exhibit number one” of why a facility like Yucca Mountain is necessary.
“I just can’t believe why people sit on the sidelines,” said Shimkus. “When you got this stuff maybe migrating to the Columbia in the Northwest…that’s where the environmentalists love to live, work and play and hike and do all that stuff and they’re willing to not fight for remediation. It’s curious.”
Shimkus has served in the House of Representatives since 1997 and has pushed repeatedly to start licensing and construction of the permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, which remains the country’s only federally designated, permanent disposal site for high-level radioactive waste created by commercial nuclear power plants and government nuclear weapons programs.
“We’ve got a major major void to fill with Mr. Shimkus retiring,” said Sean Finnerty, director of federal programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, at a conference last week. “He has been a powerhouse for us and there’s been no bigger champion, Republican or Democrat, in trying to solve used fuel issues for us.”
Finnerty also said Rep. Duncan could follow in Shimkus’s footsteps.
Rep. Duncan’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
