President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested his administration could rethink its efforts to license a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the Washington Post reported.
“I think you should do things where people want them to happen, so I would be very inclined to be against it,” Trump told Reno radio station KRNV. “We will be looking at it very seriously over the next few weeks, and I agree with the people of Nevada.”
Nevada state leaders and lawmakers have consistently opposed federal efforts dating to 1987 to bury under Yucca Mountain in Nye County the nation’s stockpile of used fuel from commercial nuclear power reactors and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations.
The George W. Bush administration Department of Energy submitted the license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, but the Obama administration suspended the effort two years later. The Trump administration has sought to revive it by funding the licensing proceeding at the NRC and DOE in the last two budget cycles. The House has supported funding for licensing — even adding $100 million to the $170 million request for both agencies in fiscal 2019 — but the Senate has rejected the requests. The upper chamber has had its way when it comes time to put together the final energy budget.
Energy Department officials so far have refused to say whether they will seek funding for licensing again in their fiscal 2020 budget proposal, due in February. There was no immediate comment from the White House on whether it might reconsider Yucca Mountain, the Post reported.
