The Trump administration appeared to harden its resolve to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository over host state Nevada’s objections this week, even as word leaked that a site contractor was marshalling its workforce to restart the project and a House panel held a hearing on new pro-Yucca legislation.
On Wednesday, after the hearing and a private meeting between Nevada’s fiercely anti-Yucca Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) and Energy Secretary Rick Perry in Washington, a spokesperson for AREVA Federal Services confirmed the company was preparing for DOE to formally announce its intentions to restart Yucca Mountain “in a matter of weeks.” The spokesperson also confirmed AREVA is seeking some 350 engineers to help with early Yucca restart activities.
AREVA is a partner in Yucca Mountain management and operations contractor USA Repository Services, along with AECOM and CB&I. The company said its timeline and employee ramp-up was based solely on the Trump administration’s March proposal to resume the Yucca license application in fiscal 2018 — not on private conversations with any DOE official.
On Tuesday, a day before AREVA’s plans leaked, Perry told Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) — author of the pro-Yucca Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017 that would grease the skids for a restart — “the importance of resuming the licensing process became even clearer during my recent tour of the Yucca Mountain site.”
One of the early obstacles for a restart, for which AREVA sounded a call to arms in an internal quarterly newsletter, is helping DOE fight what one former agency official said in congressional testimony Wednesday could be a four-year legal battle over the 200-plus contentions Nevada raised with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on the Yucca license application DOE filed in 2008.
The Barack Obama administration canceled that license application in 2010, and the former DOE official warned Wednesday the agency needs both will and the funding for the protracted legal battle that looms.
“Both the NRC and the Department of Energy must be adequately funded to adequately litigate those contentions,” Ward Sproat, current Bechtel National principal vice president and former director of the defunct Energy Department Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee during Wednesday’s hearing.
While Sproat estimated it would take between two and four years to resolve the technical contentions Nevada raised, the state estimates it will take four to five years.
Shimkus’ wonkish, highly nuanced bill would among other things give the federal government the right to use Nevada’s water at Yucca after the NRC approves DOE’s license application — something pro- and anti-Yucca people now agree could take most or all of President Trump’s first term in office. The legislation also would clarify that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has sole authority to issue air-quality permits at the federal site.
In a stall tactic that proved effective at various times over the past several decades, Nevada denied DOE air and water permits the agency said it needed to build the repository at Yucca Mountain.
After Wednesday’s hearing, Shimkus told reporters he had no timetable for formally filing his bill, which is technically still in draft form. Previously, Shimkus said he wanted the House to pass the measure before leaving town for its annual summer recess in August.
Asked whether he might amend the draft bill before trying to advance it to the full Energy and Commerce Committee, Shimkus said “I think that the the hearing today gave a lot of support for the current language.”
Shimkus also said he was pleased with the Trump administration proposal to spend $120 million in fiscal 2018 to resume DOE’s Yucca license application, and begin early work on interim storage of nuclear waste.
Meanwhile, Nevada has only dug its heels in harder against Yucca. Four U.S. lawmakers from the Silver State appeared at Wednesday’s hearing to slam the proposal, taking Shimkus to task for foisting the nation’s nuclear waste on a state that generates none of its own.
Sen. Dean Heller (R), a late addition to the hearing, crossed the Capitol Hill campus Wednesday to repeat the mantra of his erstwhile colleague and anti-Yucca crusader-in-chief Harry Reid: “Yucca Mountain is dead,” Heller told Shimkus and the rest of the subcommittee.
In a press release issued after his meeting with Perry, Sandoval said he told the former Texas governor “Nevada will continue to oppose the storage of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain at every turn.”
DOE did not reply to a request for comment from Perry about his meeting with Sandoval.
Exchange Monitor correspondent Karl Herchenroeder contributed to this story from Washington.
