The U.S. Senate late Wednesday approved a short-term appropriations bill to keep all federal agencies operating through Feb. 8, but once again left the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository in Nevada unfunded following an apparent push by supporters of the long-delayed project.
Senators passed the latest continuing resolution by voice vote just after 10 p.m. The House is due to take up the legislation today, and President Donald Trump has indicated he will sign it, the Washington Post reported.
This bill maintains current funding levels for the Department of Homeland Security and a number of other agencies that are operating on a continuing resolution that expires Friday. Other federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Pentagon, have already received full-year funding for the current fiscal 2019.
There has been much discussion in recent weeks that lawmakers might slip money for Yucca Mountain into the follow-on to the existing continuing resolution, but there is no language on radioactive waste in the nine-page measure unveiled Wednesday and it is not expected to appear in any appropriations bill for the remainder of the budget year through to Sept. 30, 2019.
Providing money for Yucca Mountain “on a potential omnibus for FY19 would have essentially meant we were including it on an unrelated bill since Congress already passed the Energy and Water bill to fund those relevant agencies,” a source on Capitol Hill said by email Wednesday. “Senator Alexander seems to have indicated that effort is over based on his recent press statements.”
A spokesman for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) acknowledged Tuesday he had proposed $70 million for nuclear waste management for the remainder of fiscal 2019, as first reported by Politico. That would have provided $30 million each for licensing activities at DOE and the NRC, plus $10 million to advance interim storage of radioactive waste. The Energy Department had sought authority to redirect $120 million in unobligated funds to the program.
Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain as the eventual site for disposal of tens of thousands of tons of spent commercial nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear work. The George W. Bush administration DOE filed its license application with the NRC in 2008, but the Obama administration halted the proceeding. The Trump administration has sought funding to resume licensing in its first two budget proposals, but has been denied twice by Congress.
