Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday affirmed his belief that the planned site for a nuclear waste repository under Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is safe, even given its proximity to an Air Force munitions test range and the potential for earthquakes in the area.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) pressed Perry on the issue during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the Energy Department’s fiscal 2020 budget request.
“Even former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has stated that transportation of nuclear waste near the range could impact testing and training,” Cortez Masto said. “Do you think it is safe to store waste nearby even with the threat that errant ordnance or any other mishap near Yucca Mountain could have an extremely negative impact on the public?”
Perry responded, “I think it’s safe, senator.”
For the budget year that begins Oct. 1, the Energy Department has requested $116 million to resume licensing of the Yucca Mountain repository and establish a “robust” program for interim storage of nuclear waste until the final disposal site is ready. Congress has twice rejected the Trump administration’s requests for Yucca licensiung funding at DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart the licensing process, which the Obama administration froze nearly a decade ago.
The Nevada Test and Training Range covers 2.9 million acres on Nellis Air Force Base, available for training with a range of live munitions. Yucca Mountain stands next to the Air Force base.
As he did in budget hearings on Capitol Hill last week, Perry noted that federal law requires that the nation’s nuclear waste repository be built under Yucca Mountain. Cortez Masto countered that the law in question, the 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, constituted an intentional “end run” around sound science to ensure that Nevada was the only state to ultimately be stuck with the radioactive material.
