Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) this week called on the top leaders and appropriators in the House of Representatives to prevent any funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in her state in the next federal budget bill.
“We are about a week out from the deadline to fund the government and there are efforts to slip in funding for #YuccaMountain in this must-pass bill,” Titus tweeted on Thursday. “I wrote House Leadership to call on them NOT to waste more money on this proposal. Nevada is not a wasteland.”
President Donald Trump in September signed a multi-agency appropriations bill that provides full-year funding for the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission through Sept. 30, 2019. That fiscal 2019 legislation did not provide the money the agencies requested to resume the long-frozen licensing for the planned radioactive waste disposal facility in Nye County, Nev.
However, the Homeland Security Department and several other federal agencies are funded through a short-term continuing budget resolution that expires on Dec. 7. There are yet-unconfirmed rumblings that the follow-on appropriations bill might provide money to advance Yucca Mountain as well as interim storage sites that could hold waste until the permanent repository is ready. No specifics have leaked out yet regarding possible dollar figures.
Titus tried to head that outcome off in a Nov. 28 letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and the top members of the House Appropriations Committee: Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.).
“Instead of wasting billions more in funding for this failed project, I want to work with you and the authorizing committee to advance consent-based siting for nuclear repositories,” Titus wrote.
Congress in 1987 designated that tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear activities be buried below Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. While communities in the area have welcomed an anticipated influx of income and employment, Nevada leaders at the state and federal level have long opposed the importing of nuclear waste.
The federal government has spent about $5 billion on the project, including the Energy Department’s submission of its license application in 2008 to the NRC. The Obama administration suspended that proceeding two years later, and the Trump administration has not persuaded Congress yet to provide funding to resume licensing.
With a week until the continuing resolution runs out, specifics of the next appropriations bill are hard to come by, including whether it will be another short-term measure or provide full-year financing. Trump has also threatened to veto the bill if it does not include money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
