The White House said late Thursday it would not seek any funding in its upcoming budget proposal for licensing a nuclear waste disposal facility under Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The brief emailed statement from an administration official – “The President’s 2021 budget will not have funding for the licensing of Yucca Mountain in it” – came less than an hour after President Donald Trump tweeted on the issue.
“Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you! Congress and previous Administrations have long failed to find lasting solutions – my Administration is committed to exploring innovative approaches – I’m confident we can get it done!” Trump stated just after 5 p.m.
The comments echo a statement Trump made in October 2018 while in Nevada on a campaign stop for then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.). At that point the president also suggested he sympathized with long-held opposition in Nevada to hosting a geologic repository for other states’ radioactive waste, and that “we will be looking at it very seriously over the next few weeks.”
Nothing appeared to come of that comment, and the White House in March 2019 for a third time requested congressional appropriations to resume licensing of the Yucca Mountain facility. Congress has rejected all three proposals.
Industry experts said last week the administration would forgo asking for money for the project on Monday when it rolls out the budget plan for fiscal 2021.
The White House Office of Management and Budget did not respond to queries regarding the reason for the turnaround on Yucca Mountain or what other approaches would be considered. The Department of Energy, the applicant for the federal license, referred questions to the White House. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which ultimately would rule on the application, also did not comment.
However, an unidentified administration official told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Thursday that there would be “substantial” funding for a separate waste-management option. The president’s budget acknowledges opposition on Capitol Hill to the Yucca Mountain approach, the official said.
“They say if you can’t beat them, join them. President Trump tried to shove nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain down our throats for three years,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) tweeted Thursday evening. “We beat him badly and he knows it.”
The Nevada Democratic Caucus is scheduled for Feb. 22. The party did well in Nevada in the midterms: Then-Rep. Jacky Rosen (D) unseated Heller and Steve Sisolak became the state’s first Democratic Party governor in two decades.
Candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2020 have made sure to note their support for Nevada’s fight against Yucca Mountain during campaign stops in the state. Until Thursday, Trump had been silent on the topic. The state has six electoral votes, which went to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Former Vice President Joe Biden chimed in with a statement from the campaign trail, noting Trump’s prior efforts to fund Yucca Mountain. “Under a Biden Administration there would be absolutely zero dumping of nuclear waste in Nevada.”
“It seems the lure of electoral college votes in Nevada makes Presidential Candidates abandon all reason and do what politicians do, they make promises,” one industry source told RadWaste Monitor by email Thursday.
Federal law still requires that the nation’s high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel from nuclear power plants be deposited at Yucca Mountain, noted Robert Halstead, who leads Nevada’s defense against the project as executive director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects. This has been key to the case laid out by Energy Department leaders in recent years for why Congress should fund the program.
There is now about 100,000 metric tons of waste stranded in storage at more than sites around the country, encompassing a handful of Energy Department properties but primarily active or retired commercial nuclear facilities. Power plants add up to 2,500 metric tons of spent fuel to the stockpile each year.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act put the Energy Department in charge of disposal. Congress amended the law five years later to restrict the end location to the federal property about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
State and federal politicians in Nevada have decred this move from the start, warning of damage to the tourist economy and the potential for environmental disaster if any radiation escapes the facility. The project’s backers say the federal government spent billions of dollars to determine the disposal approach would prevent that from happening.
The Energy Department filed its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, already a decade past the date at which Congress said it should begin accepting waste for disposal. Upon taking office in January 2009, President Barack Obama quickly defunded the licensing proceeding at DOE and the NRC.
The Obama administration formed a blue-ribbon commission of experts to study the matter. The panel in 2012 recommended an approach for siting nuclear waste storage and disposal that would require assent from impacted states, localities, and Indian communities. The Energy Department began a “consent-based” program near the end of Obama’s term in office for separate disposal of defense and commercial waste, but it died as Trump took office. (A placeholder page for consent-based siting has been posted for several years on the DOE website. It mentions Rick Perry, who stepped down as energy secretary in November.)
Supporters of Yucca Mountain believed the Trump administration would be a boon for their cause. And Trump did seek congressional appropriations for licensing for fiscal years 2018, 2019, and 2020. The proposal for the current budget period that began Oct. 1, 2019, was about $150 million at the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Republican-led House backed Yucca during the first two years, but ran up against the preference of Senate appropriators to fund another program: consolidated interim storage facilities that could more quickly take spent fuel, allowing DOE to meet its legal mandate until a repository was ready. The standoff led to no money for either approach –with a widely acknowledged assist from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnnell (R-Ky.), who stepped on any pro-Yucca bill in an effort to safeguard Heller and the GOP majority.
Democrats flipped the House in the 2018 midterms. At that point, appropriators in both chambers of Congress appeared ready to oppose Yucca Mountain and fund work to advance interim storage. But appropriations legislation passed and signed in December zeroed out all money for that as well.
Two corporate teams have applied for NRC licenses for temporary spent-fuel storage: Holtec International in southeastern New Mexico and International Storage Partners nearby in West Texas. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), who is running for Senate, opposes the Holtec project; his office acknowledged in December he argued against federal funding that could advance that effort.
This new announcement is another example of leaders putting off a final decision for dealing with nuclear waste, the industry source stated. “They promise a better approach tomorrow only to figure out eventually there really is none because any other approach still needs a site; and nobody wants to be the host. We saw it with Obama who promised it with his Blue Ribbon Commission and all that did was kick the can down the road. Now we see Trump kicking the can down the road with another non-specific promise of ‘innovative approaches.’”
Participants at the Energy Communities Alliance annual meeting last week in Washington, D.C., said they expect the political climate in this election year will prevent timely passage of a full-year budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. That means Congress would have to pass short-term continuing resolutions to keep the federal government running past Sept. 30. Such measures would keep Yucca Mountain off the books while at least delaying any money for an alternative means of radioactive waste disposal.
