U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) on Monday said he believes 300 members of the House of Representatives would line up behind his bill on advancing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository if it could get a floor vote.
In an evening speech on the House floor, Shimkus noted that H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017, had broad support from both parties and had passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in June by a 49-4 vote.
“There is a bipartisan consensus as proven by the 49-4 vote … in the committee, and by 108 co-sponsors, and when we get the bill on the floor a passage of a bill that we would probably would project to get 300 votes,” Shimkus told the smattering of lawmakers who stayed in the chamber after the end of the legislative day.
Shimkus’ projection appeared to be based on the measure’s strong backing in committee. The House has also generally been supportive of Yucca Mountain. For example: More than 300 members in 2014 voted against two amendments from Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) to eliminate funding for the project.
There was no word this week on when, or if, the bill will get a floor vote during the 115th Congress. If it does, its future could remain murky given the Senate’s general antipathy to the Yucca Mountain project.
A series of Republican and Democratic House members joined Shimkus for about an hour to offer speeches in support of his bill and more broadly on the need to do something with the tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste stored around the nation.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) noted Congress in 1982 assigned the U.S. Energy Department to begin disposing of U.S. spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste by Jan. 31, 1998. By congressional decree in 1987, that waste is supposed to go into a permanent repository below Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev.
That has yet to happen, due in significant part to opposition from now-retired Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other members of the Silver State’s congressional delegation.
“Political science has deprived the public of actual science to prove that nuclear waste can be safely and permanently disposed of,” Walden said. “As a consequence of this political interference, taxpayers and ratepayers across the country are on the hook for DOE’s inaction. The American people pay over $2 million every day to temporarily store used fuel scattered throughout the United States.”
Starting in the 1980s, nuclear utilities paid more than $30 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund, which is intended to pay for Yucca Mountain. The federal government has also already made more than $6 billion in liability payments to utilities that remain stuck with the spent fuel.
H.R. 3053 features a long list of measures intended to enhance the federal government’s capacity to move forward with Yucca Mountain, including accelerating transfer of responsibility for the federal property from the Interior Department to the Energy Department, and specifying that the 147,000-acre plot would almost entirely be used for disposal of nuclear waste.
“Would you rather have nuclear waste or defense waste next to your mainly cities, by major bodies of water?” Shimkus asked. “Or would you rather have them in the desert underneath a mountain?”
Speaking ahead of her colleagues, Titus made clear that for her the answer is anywhere but Nevada, which does not have any nuclear power plants. She called Yucca Mountain an “unworkable project.”
“There are design flaws that the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s] own analysis lead to radioactive waste leaking into the water table and transportation plans would ship more than 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste by train and truck through 329 congressional districts,” she said.
During a Feb. 6 House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) blamed congressional appropriators for the standstill on Shimkus’ bill, after they effectively spent the Nuclear Waste Fund money. Congressional Budget Office accounting rules have essentially sent the money to other federal programs, the committee said in a November 2017 explainer on H.R. 3053.
While waiting for a floor vote, Shimkus has worked to inform his fellow House members about the need to fund and build Yucca Mountain.
Funding remains another obstacle to the repository. The Trump administration sought $150 million in the current budget year for the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume licensing activities for the repository, with a slice of that carved out to develop interim storage until Yucca Mountain is ready. The House signed off on the full request, while the Senate zeroed out all Yucca funding in an energy appropriations bill that is still waiting on a floor vote.
For fiscal 2019, which begins on Oct. 1, the NRC requested nearly $48 million for Yucca-related work and DOE again asked for $120 million for the project and interim storage. The DOE budget request could be on the agenda when Energy Secretary Rick Perry appears before the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee next Thursday.
