Stakeholders must finally accept that the long-planned, long-delayed nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., is dead and needs to be replaced with a new approach, according to a former senior official with the Department of Energy.
“The sooner everyone agrees to pull the plug on Yucca Mountain, the sooner the United States can move forward on consolidated storage for the next 40 to 50 years, since this is likely the amount of time it will take to bring a long-term repository into operation,” David Klaus wrote in a commentary published Aug. 26 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “This will give the government time to find a new site using a consent-based process.”
Klaus served as DOE deputy undersecretary for management and performance from July 2013 to January 2017, when President Donald Trump was inaugurated. A former counsel for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he is currently an affiliate for Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
It has been 33 years since Congress designated the Yucca Mountain site as the location for disposal of the nation’s inventory of spent fuel from nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. The federal government has spent at least $15 billion on the program, but the repository remains unlicensed and unbuilt.
Klaus noted that both Trump and his Democratic Party rival in the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden, now oppose Yucca Mountain. The Trump White House sought for three years to secure congressional appropriations to resume licensing, which the Obama administration defunded a decade ago. Congress rejected all three bids, and Trump this year tweeted in support of Nevada’s opposition to the facility and did not seek licensing funding again for the upcoming fiscal 2021. Biden’s opposition dates to his term in the Senate and his eight years as vice president, according to Klaus.
“The few remaining Yucca Mountain advocates will undoubtedly be reluctant to abandon the project. But in the short term, there is no reason to believe that either Trump or Biden will reverse their announced position following the November election,” he wrote.
