Congress this week delayed final negotiations on a 2019 spending bill that includes the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission budgets for disposal of spent nuclear-reactor fuel, with the House again seeking to fund the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada and the Senate again opposing it.
The House and Senate were supposed to meet in a conference committee Thursday to negotiate a final version of a so-called minibus spending bill that covers NRC and DOE funding. However, the meeting was abruptly canceled. If the two chambers’ longstanding disagreement over Yucca had anything to do with it, nobody is saying so.
“The [conference] meeting has been postponed due to scheduling conflicts,” a spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee said by email. “The new date is TBD but we expect it to be next week.”
The proposed geologic repository in Nevada is still regarded as a political nonstarter in the Senate, where the GOP clings to a 51-49 majority and the strongly anti-Yucca Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) is up for re-election in a tight race with Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.).
The House proposed $270 million for DOE and NRC licensing programs for the long-planned, unbuilt facility in Nye County, Nev: $100 million more than the White House sought for the project in the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
The Senate recommended no funding for Yucca whatsoever. Instead, senators want the Department of Energy to create an interim nuclear-waste storage site before building a permanent repository, such as Yucca.
Meanwhile, the Senate proposed about $898 million in base funding for the NRC itself in 2019, while the House recommended $953 million. Most of the difference for the NRC is $48 million is the Yucca funding included in the House’s version of the bill but absent from the Senate’s.
The House bill would provide $150 million for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), $30 million more than the Senate. The program remediates and maintains former locations of Manhattan Project and Atomic Energy Commission operations.
Both chambers of Congress are prepared to provide $3.6 million for the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an 11-member panel of experts for the Department of Energy.
