RW Monitor
5/15/2015
IN THE 2016 ELECTION
Republican Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio voiced his support for opening Yucca Mountain, according to a report this week in the Greenville News. The Florida Senator was in South Carolina last weekend campaigning for the Republican nomination when local reporters asked him his thoughts on Yucca Mountain. Rubio reasoned that the United States has spent so much time and money on the project that it represents the country’s best option. “The bottom line is we, today, including here in South Carolina, are holding onto nuclear material in areas that were supposed to be temporary areas,” Rubio told local reporters. “So you do need a permanent, central depository for it. Yucca Mountain is the place that’s gotten the money, and it was chosen years ago. So unless someone can identify a better project, that’s the one we should move forward on.” The Obama Administration shuttered the Yucca Mountain project in 2010 after deeming the site “unworkable” due to a lack of consent from the state of Nevada.
Presumptive Republican Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush voiced his opposition to Yucca Mountain this week following a meeting in Nevada, according to reports from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Bush, who has not announced his official candidacy for the nomination yet, told reporters that disposal should go to communities that want the waste. The former Florida governor advocated for a consent-based system to disposal, similar to the one the Department of Energy currently supports. “I think we need to move to a system where the communities and states want it,” Bush said. “It’s a system where instead of having it forced down the throats of people, that there is a consensus inside the communities and states that they want it and they proactively go for it. So whether that is going to be here or some other state over the long haul, we need to have a long-term solution for sure.”
IN THE INDUSTRY
The Nuclear Energy Institute re-elected Exelon President and CEO Christopher Crane as chairman of NEI’s board of directors, the organization announced this week. Donald Brandt, chairman of the board, president and CEO of Pinnacle West Capital Corp. and Arizona Public Service Co., has been re-elected vice chairman of the board. NEI also elected three new members to its board of directors, including: Centrus Energy Corp. President and CEO Daniel Poneman, NuScale Power CEO John Hopkins, and University of Tennessee nuclear engineering department head Wesley Hines. As part of the elections, the board of directors also re-elected NEI’s leadership team with Marvin Fertel continuing to serve as the group’s president and CEO.
