Longtime Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), perhaps the loudest voice on Capitol Hill in favor of building a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, on Friday announced he would not seek re-election in 2020.
This would have been Shimkus 13th campaign for the House. He was first elected in 1996 and has represented three different congressional districts in Illinois.
“As Illinois candidates begin to circulate petitions next week, now is the time for me to announce that I will not be seeking re-election,” Shimkus said in a prepared statement Friday afternoon. “It has been the honor of my lifetime to be asked by the people of Illinois to represent them in our nation’s capitol [sic].”
The statement made no reference to Shimkus’ longtime advocacy for a permanent means for disposal of tens of thousands of tons of U.S. radioactive spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. “He has given me no indication that he plans to step back from this issue for the remainder of his term,” spokesman Jordan Haverly said by email Friday, without saying whether Shimkus will attempt any new legislative measures.
In a 2014 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, Shimkus wrote that “building a repository at Yucca Mountain would still be the fastest, best and most viable solution” for the country’s spent nuclear fuel.”
In the last Congress, Shimkus introduced the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, which contained a long set of measures to strengthen the federal government’s ability to finally build the Yucca Mountain repository. As a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he successfully pushed the bill through bipartisan votes that sent it out of the panel and through the full House. The bill never got a vote in the Senate before the 115th Congress ended on Jan. 3 of this year, but Shimkus and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) in May submitted similar legislation. That bill remains before the Energy and Commerce Committee and a number of other House panels with jurisdiction.
“[W]e all know he will not stop pushing for a permanent storage solution for spent nuclear fuel,” Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said in a statement Friday on Shimkus’ pending departure.
