After nearly a year, the full House of Representatives is expected next week to debate and vote on legislation intended to strengthen the federal government’s ability to build a radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
Rep. John Shimkus’ (R-Ill.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments (H.R. 3053) cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee last June on a strongly bipartisan 49-4 vote, then went quiet for nearly a year. But the legislation is to be taken up Tuesday by the powerful House Rules Committee, which writes rules of debate for bills considered on the floor.
There appeared to be little doubt the measure would quickly reach the House floor, though Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) office said Thursday a date and time remained to be determined.
“Following last summer’s 49-4 vote out of the committee, bipartisan legislation to get our nation’s nuclear waste management policy back on track is heading to the House floor next week,” Shimkus and Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said in a joint statement Thursday. “We owe it to the 121 communities across 39 states, as well as to every American taxpayer forced to shoulder the daily $2.2 million burden of inaction, to get this done.”
The 39 states are home to nuclear power plants storing what has grown to be more than 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel. Congress in 1982 gave the Department of Energy until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin disposing of that waste, and five years later designated Yucca Mountain as the site for the underground repository. There has been little progress in building the facility in the last three decades, and the Obama administration stopped the licensing process initiated by its predecessor. Meanwhile, DOE has paid more than $6 billion to utilities stuck with the spent fuel.
Shimkus’ bill is intended to help break the logjam. Among a long list of measures, it would hasten the transfer of authority for the federal property from the Interior Department to DOE and make clear the 147,000-acre plot would nearly fully be used or nuclear waste disposal. It would effectively require DOE to re-establish the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which was dissolved as the Obama administration canceled all work on Yucca Mountain nearly a decade ago.
The bill would also give a boost to development of consolidated interim storage sites that would hold the spent fuel until the permanent repository is ready. It would allow DOE to contract with one or more nongovernmental organizations for interim storage. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing a license application for a facility in New Mexico and is expected within weeks to be asked to resume a suspended review for another site in West Texas.
H.R. 3053 is also intended to fix the sticky question of ownership of the spent fuel on its way to storage or disposal – requiring that DOE take ownership as soon as the material is accepted for shipment.
The bill’s supporters are hoping for an overwhelming show of support in the House vote, sending a message to the Senate, which has generally been more skeptical about developing the Yucca Mountain repository. That has remained true even following the retirement last year of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Among other things, the Rules Committee will write a framework for offering amendments to the bill on the House floor. Lawmakers from Nevada, who oppose storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, have vowed to fight Shimkus’ bill since before it cleared the committee and are all but certain to attempt amendments on the floor.
“This legislation is Screw Nevada 2.0,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) said in a statement Thursday. “Nothing has changed since I testified against this flawed bill last summer. The bill rejects the science and it ignores Nevada’s continued and steadfast opposition. H.R. 3053 simply doubles down on the failed policies of 31 years ago.”
Titus pledged to continue to battle the bill, as did Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) should it reach the Senate.
“If the House of Representatives acts again to attempt to dump nuclear waste in Nevada, I will stop them just as I have in the past. As long as I am in the U.S. Senate, Yucca Mountain is dead. It is literally that simple,” Heller said in a statement to RadWaste Monitor.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act would not actually fund work on Yucca Mountain, a step that has proven challenging in recent years. In the fiscal 2018 omnibus budget signed into law in March, lawmakers zeroed out about $150 million DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requested to resume licensing operations for the repository. For fiscal 2019, which begins on Oct. 1, DOE is again seeking $110 million for the effort while the NRC has upped its request from $30 million to nearly $48 million.
“We continue to look for the guidance from elected officials to get it to us,” said Ned Larson, a team leader with DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, said Tuesday at a nuclear industry conference in Savannah, Ga. “Once that happens we believe we have the data and information to move and to act at that point. But it’s our elected officials that will be making those decisions.”
To secure that funding and help the Shimkus bill pass, proponents of advancing disposition of the U.S. stockpile of used nuclear reactor fuel must make their voices heard in Congress, panel speakers said at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Used Fuel Management Conference.
“Broadly speaking, we’re optimistic,” said Mark Richter, NEI senior project manager for fuel and decommissioning programs, said of the Shimkus bill. “Here in the final push, in the closing days and weeks … advocacy is going to be key, reaching out to your elected officials in Congress to help them understand the importance of moving that forward.”
ExchangeMonitor reporter Dan Leone contributed to this report.
