President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal calls for $120 million to restart licensing activities for the mothballed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, and in the meantime for a “robust” interim storage program.
“These investments would accelerate progress on fulfilling the Federal Government’s obligations to address nuclear waste, enhance national security, and reduce future taxpayer burden,” reads the White House budget proposal that lays out broad spending plans for the next budget year. A more detailed accounting is expected in May, but state leaders and U.S. lawmakers from Nevada are already vowing to fight any revival of Yucca Mountain.
The Obama administration in 2009, at the urging of then-Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), canceled plans to bury tens of thousands of tons of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain. The Department of Energy subsequently sought to withdraw its license application from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which rejected the request but has conducted limited licensing activities in recent years after congressional funding dried up.
About a month after Reid’s retirement in January, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) announced his intention to introduce legislation by this summer that would restart the licensing process, while also supporting interim storage efforts.
The Nevada government and most lawmakers from the state have long opposed the Yucca Mountain facility, deeply skeptical of federal assurances that radioactive waste in deep storage would pose no long-term health or safety threat. Shortly after the Trump budget proposal was made public, Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) made clear Thursday the state’s position has not changed.
“Any attempt to resurrect this ill-conceived project will be met with relentless opposition, and maximum resources,” Sandoval said in a prepared statement. “Continuing down a path that seeks to force this unsafe and unwanted project on Nevada is a waste of time and money and only gets the country farther away from solving its nuclear waste problem.”
The $120 million federal budget item could fund the Energy Department’s efforts in staffing and preparing an office for a potential Yucca Mountain restart, according to an informed source. DOE would need to revive the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the entity charged with carrying out disposal of domestic spent nuclear fuel as laid out in the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which was amended in 1987, dictating that DOE focus all nuclear waste storage efforts on Yucca Mountain. That office was stripped of funding in fiscal 2011. Additional DOE expenses could include state outreach in Nevada and transportation planning.
The NRC would need to request its own funding for licensing activities in fiscal 2018, which begins on Oct. 1. An NRC spokesman said Thursday the agency has not determined the amount required for restarting the licensing process.
The anti-Yucca Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects estimates DOE will need $1.7 billion in total funding and the NRC $330 million to complete the licensing process that remains, which the agency says could take 400 hearing days over a four- to five-year span.
Ultimately, Congress will set appropriations levels, and lawmakers from both parties have already expressed reservations to many parts of the Trump plan — including the Yucca restart.
“This request simply perpetuates a decades-long fight that has been ill-advised from the start, done little to solve our nation’s waste problem, and wasted billions of U.S. tax payer dollars,” Nevada Sens. Dean Heller (R) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D) wrote Thursday in a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. The senators urged that the administration instead fund DOE’s Obama-era consent-based siting program to establish separate repositories for defense and commercial nuclear waste.
The Nevada Legislature is expected next week to consider a resolution reaffirming opposition to the suspended repository. “The Nevada Legislature calls on President Donald J. Trump to veto any legislation that would attempt to locate any temporary, interim or permanent repository or storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the State of Nevada,” the resolution reads.
According to the Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state plans to fully adjudicate 218 admitted contentions in opposition to the license application and submit 30 to 50 new contentions to the NRC, if the process is restarted.
The agency and Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt this week requested $7.2 million in funding over the next two years to defend the state in the licensing proceedings. The agency requested $1.9 million per year for technical experts and other resources, while the attorney general requested $1.7 million annually for his legal and expert team.
President Obama’s alternative to Yucca Mountain envisions the operation of interim facilities within a few years from now to consolidate nuclear waste storage leading up to the development of one of more national repositories by 2048. The Energy Department during Obama’s last year in office was working to develop a consent process in host states. Two private companies, Waste Control Specialists and Holtec International, are pursuing NRC licenses for facilities that could together hold 160,000 metric tons of spent fuel in West Texas and southeast New Mexico, respectively.
Waste Control Specialists spokesman Chuck McDonald said Thursday the company, like most everyone, is waiting for a specific accounting about how the proposed $120 million would be allocated for Yucca Mountain and interim storage. Still, “We think that this is very encouraging language in the budget,” he said in a telephone interview. “We take that as good news. … We like the sound of ‘robust.'”
