By John Stang
The always controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could play a role in determining whether Republicans or Democrats control the U.S. Senate after the midterm elections on Tuesday.
Incumbent Nevada senior Sen. Dean Heller (R) is campaigning to retain his seat against a challenge from Rep. Jacky Rosen (D). He has been seen as one of the most vulnerable GOP senators – a potentially bad sign as Republicans look to sustain or expand their exceptionally slim 51-49 majority in the upper chamber.
Both Heller and Rosen strongly oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to revive licensing for the stalled disposal facility in Nye County, Nev., for spent nuclear power reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Their clash is over who can do a better job of keeping other states’ nuclear waste from being shipped to Nevada and kept there permanently.
While the project is not without its supporters in Nevada – notably leaders and locals in the area where the repository would be built who anticipate it would provide new jobs and other economic benefits – it remains deeply unpopular at the state level.
Heller moved from the House of Representatives to the Senate in 2011 following the resignation of Sen. John Ensign, then was elected to a full term in 2012. He regularly promotes his efforts to prevent funding or other legislative efforts that could advance Yucca Mountain toward reality.
“Unlike his opponent, Heller has delivered time and again on his promise to stop Yucca Mountain and prevent Nevada from becoming the nation’s dumping ground for nuclear waste,” according to a Heller campaign press release from May. “Despite Rosen’s objections, the House has repeatedly passed funding to restart the licensing process for Yucca. But fortunately for Nevadans, Heller has stopped the funding every time.”
Congress in 1987 concurred on designating Yucca Mountain as the site for the future repository, which has made halting progress since then toward being licensed. The Obama administration in 2010 defunded the Department of Energy license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but the Trump administration has sought to resume the proceeding.
The House backed the administration’s funding requests for licensing at DOE and the NRC in the fiscal 2018 and 2019 budget cycles. It also overwhelmingly passed Rep. John Shimkus’ (R-Ill.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, which would strengthen the federal government’s capacity to build the facility. The Senate has roundly rejected any funding for the project and has yet to take up the Shimkus bill.
Heller says this is largely due to his efforts. While he is not a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he said in September he “worked closely” with colleagues on the panel to ensure there was no money for Yucca Mountain in the bill that funds DOE and the NRC through Sept. 30 of next year.
First-termer Rosen, though, has accused Heller of not being able to influence his Republican colleagues in the House who keep passing pro-Yucca Mountain legislation. She called out the senator when the House overwhelmingly passed the Shimkus bill in May.
“The vote is a reminder that Sen. Dean Heller has frequently let Nevadans down when it comes to opposing Yucca Mountain because he’s preoccupied with partisan loyalty and his own self-interest,” according to a Rosen campaign statement. “Heller couldn’t even stop his close friend of more than a decade, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, from bringing the Yucca Mountain bill to the floor for (a) vote.”
The Shimkus legislation, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, has not appeared to gain any traction in the Senate toward a vote. Issue watchers, though, have said it could still pop up in the lame-duck session after the election and before the end of the 115th Congress in early January. By that point Heller’s political future will have been determined, potentially removing one reason GOP leaders in the Senate have been reluctant to allow the measure to advance.
But Roll Call, an inside-the Beltway political news publication, reported in October “The bill is unlikely to move in the Senate, as Nevada Sens. Dean Heller, a Republican, and Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, have the ability to block consideration of the bill over their opposition to the Yucca Mountain site. They have the backing of Senate leadership as the two parties look to control a swing state.”
If either candidate has received contributions from an organization trying to promote political support for Yucca Mountain – a losing cause at the statewide level in Nevada – there is no obvious sign of it in their campaign finance disclosures for 2018.
In recent weeks, Democratic lawmakers from Nevada have focused their ire on the Trump administration rather than Congress when it comes to Yucca Mountain. They urged President Donald Trump to stay true to his word after he suggested on Oct. 20 possible reconsideration of the project, then lashed out when Energy Secretary Rick Perry said less than a week later the federal approach to nuclear waste disposal had not changed. Heller, who has campaigned with Trump in Nevada, has not officially addressed this back-and-forth.
Recent polling showed Heller with at least a 2 percent edge over Rosen in the final days of the campaign, though a CNN poll released Wedneday put the challenger up by three points.
The lawmakers’ campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.
The other races in Nevada this year are, per Ballotpedia:
- 1st Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Dina Titus (D) vs. Republican Joyce Bentley, Libertarian Robert Van Strawder, and Daniel Garfield of the Independent American Party.
- 2nd Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Mark Amodei (R) vs. Democrat Clint Koble.
- 3rd Congressional District: Incumbent Rosen is running for Senate. Candidates are: Democrat Susie Lee, Republican Danny Tarkanian, Libertarian Steven Brown, Harry Vickers of the Independent American Party, and independents Gilbert Eisner, David Goossen, and Tony Gumina.
- 4th Congressional District: Incumbent Ruben Kihuen (D) is not seeking re-election. The campaign pits Democrat Steven Horsford against Republican Cresent Hardy (both have already held the job for a single term), along with Warren Markowitz of the Independent American Party, Libertarian Gregg Luckner, and independents Rodney Smith and Dean McGonigle.
The Heller-Rosen contest is the highest-profile campaign to hinge in part of nuclear waste, but the topic has popped up elsewhere.
Republican Bob Hugin, who is seeking to unseat 12-year Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), in early October called on the Senate to vote on the Shimkus bill. In a press conference and accompanying news release, he noted that New Jersey is one of nearly 40 states stuck with spent reactor fuel until some form of temporary storage or permanent disposal space is ready.
In this case, the issue has been overshadowed by the New Jersey pyrotechnics of Hugin accusing Menendez of sleeping with teenage prostitutes, a claim that was never proven, along with Menendez’s admonishment by the Senate Ethics Committee for accepting gifts from a friend to intervene with some federal agencies on his behalf.
Various polls through October have shown Menendez with a comfortable lead over Hugin.
The issue of nuclear waste disposal has also at least briefly popped up among House of Representatives candidates in the West Texas-southeastern New Mexico region where two separate corporate teams plan to build interim storage facilities for spent nuclear reactor fuel. Those sites, assuming licensing by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, would potentially hold the material until Yucca Mountain or another repository is ready.
The races of note here:
- Texas 11th Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Mike Conaway (R) vs. Democrat Jennie Lou Leeder and Libertarian Rhett Rosenquest Smith. The 11th District covers Andrews County, where Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists and the U.S. branch of French nuclear company Orano intend to build a facility with total capacity of 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel.
- New Mexico 2nd Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Steve Pearce (R) is running for governor, leaving a no-incumbent campaign pitting Democrat Xochitl Torres Small against Republican Yvette Herrell. The 2nd District covers Lea County, where New Jersey-based Holtec International plans to build a facility with a maximum capacity of 173,000 metric tons.
In the Texas race, neither campaign’s website mentions the proposed facility planned for the state. The candidates are focused on healthcare, gun control, and immigration. However, the issue came up in an Oct.1 candidates forum in Midland, Texas. Conaway said the proposed site would be safe for the public and that consolidating the nation’s used fuel in interim sites makes sense, according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram. Leeder said voters expressed concern to her about transportation accidents involving the used fuel. She questioned why the material could not be stored at the current sites.
The proposed Holtec interim storage site just across the border in New Mexico has not raised a peep in the campaign websites or news coverage for the Small-Herrell race.
There is no clear sign of contributions to any of these campaigns from the companies involved in the projects. For example: the Orano political action committee since 2017 has made donations for several members of Congress, including Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) and Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), but not to the Texas race.
Holtec’s PAC, meanwhile, was apparently terminated in 2016.
