A bipartisan duo on Tuesday reintroduced legislation in the House of Representatives intended to help the federal government finally build a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 is a slightly updated version of legislation introduced in 2017 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). That bill advanced out of the House on a 340-72 vote last year, but gained no traction in the Senate before the last Congress ended.
This time, Shimkus teamed with Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) to introduce the measure. As of Friday, it had an additional 12 co-sponsors, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. A largely identical bill is also pending in the Senate from Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.).
The aim of the measures is the same as it was two years ago: Provide for both consolidated interim storage and ultimately permanent disposal of tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear power reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste now spread at more than 100 locations across the country.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act assigned the Department of Energy responsibility for disposing of that material, and was amended five years later to make clear it would go to Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department in 2008 filed its license application for the repository with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later. The Trump administration over several years has sought funding to resume licensing, but Congress has consistently blocked that effort.
With a repository at best years if not decades away, there has been increased focus on moving the waste into a small number of facilities. Two corporate teams have applied for NRC licenses to build and operate such storage sites in Texas and New Mexico.
“Our country has a dangerous buildup of inadequately secured nuclear waste,” McNerney said in a press release. “We need a short and long-term solution for the storage and disposal of nuclear waste. This hazardous logjam puts communities at risk and inhibits our ability to integrate nuclear power into a robust emissions-reducing agenda to combat the impending threats of climate change.”
While the money question is beyond the scope of the McNerney-Shimkus bill, it contains a list of amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to eliminate other obstacles to nuclear waste disposal. These include:
- Establishing a DOE program for one or more “monitored retrievable storage” facilities for department-owned civilian spent fuel and high-level waste. That would include siting, building, and operating a facility, or preferably using a federally licensed commercial storage operation.
- In both of the current bills in the House and Senate, waste from retired civilian facilities would be prioritized for interim storage. The McNerney-Shimkus proposal adds language further prioritizing plants that are in seismically active areas near a major body of water. Those factors would apply to the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in San Diego County, south of McNerney’s congressional district.
- The Energy Department would, outside of a couple exceptions, be prohibited from storing waste in an interim facility until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issues its final ruling on the permanent repository.
- Roughly 147,000 acres of federal land in Nye County, Nev., would be withdrawn for the repository, with authority transferred from the Interior Department to the Energy Department. The energy secretary would have three years to provide Congress and Nevada with a management plan for the land.
- Offering a “sense of Congress” that transport routes for nuclear waste should skirt Las Vegas “to the extent practicable,” one aspect of the strategy to address Nevada’s longstanding opposition to the project.
- Updating the benefits to the host community, including updating the schedule of payments to the state or Indian tribe for a monitored retrievable storage facility or repository. For example, the annual payment prior to a site’s first shipment of spent fuel has been maintained at $5 million for the MRS but increased from $10 million to $15 million for a repository.
The Shimkus-McNerney bill was referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. As of Thursday morning, no hearing on the legislation had been scheduled. The House Armed Services, Natural Resources, and Budget and Rules committees also have jurisdiction over sections of the measure.
There was no word this week on when Barrasso might file his version of the legislation.
Nevada’s congressional delegation was quiet this week regarding the House bill. But Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto (both D-Nev.) left little doubt of their position during a May 1 hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the discussion draft of Barrasso’s measure.
“For over 30 years, many in Congress have been trying to force a repository facility on Nevada, despite the fact that Nevada does not generate or consume nuclear energy, and that Yucca Mountain is a seismically and geologically unfit site to store this dangerous material,” Cortez Masto said in testimony to the panel, which Barrasso chairs.
However, the Energy Department’s former nuclear waste chief lauded the legislation for including the land authorization and other steps that will be needed to drive the project forward. “I strongly support the Senate review and debate of this important legislation,” Ward Sproat, who led DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management from 2006 to 2009 and filed the Yucca Mountain application, wrote in a May 2 letter to Barrasso and Senate EPW Committee Ranking Member Tom Carper (D-Del.).
