March 17, 2014

WALDEN OUTLINES HOUSE ARGUMENT FOR YUCCA, AGAINST INTERIM STORAGE

By ExchangeMonitor

Though he agreed that the spent nuclear fuel disposal issue “must be resolved for nuclear energy to grow,” Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) outlined House Republicans’ case for restarting the Yuca Mountain review, and against proceeding with interim storage as the Senate has proposed, at the Nuclear Energy Assembly meeting in Washington, D.C. yesterday. “I recognize there are those who favor interim storage as a complement to a repository development,” Walden said. “I’m not convinced that starting from scratch with interim storage is progress. I’m concerned that interim storage will divert attention and resources away from permanent storage: Yucca Mountain.” Walden said he doesn’t believe pursuing interim storage would guarantee spent fuel is stored more safely, or that it would save money or decrease the federal government’s liability for failing to remove spent fuel from operating sites before 1998, as required by law. “The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reported their conclusion that it’d be faster to finish Yucca Mountain, thus reducing the taxpayers’ liability sooner, than to start from scratch with interim storage,” he said. In an effort to get more clarity on this potential cost, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Environment and the Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) “have tasked the GAO with more closely analyzing a range of scenarios,” Walden said.

As an example of the House’s general feeling toward Yucca Mountain, Walden reminded the audience yesterday that a June 2012 vote to give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission $10 million to restart its review of Yucca Mountain was passed by a margin of 326 to 81, a bipartisan landslide. “That amount of support, that depth and commitment in the House, is natural,” Alex Flint, senior vice president of governmental affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said at the meeting yesterday. “It’s a manifestation of the politics of used fuel in the House. It’s remarkably different from the situation in the Senate but speaks to the fact that there are many members in the House that have worked for decades on our issues and care deeply about them.” But the vast majority of the current membership is made up of much younger members, Flint said. “Recognize that 54 percent of the Congress has been there for 6 years or less. We have this tremendous turnover that has occurred both in the body as a whole, and most members have not been educated on our issues, they need basic educations,” he said.

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