Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who this year secured full construction funding for a crucial defense uranium plant in his state even as he stood in the way of the Trump administration’s plans for civilian nuclear-waste disposal, on Monday announced he will leave the Senate after 2020.
Alexander chairs the crucial Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, in which capacity he is the gatekeeper for upper chamber funding of the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He has held the gavel there since 2015.
Should Republicans retain control of the Senate following the 2020 elections, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) are tied for seniority on the full Appropriations Committee, among panel members who do not already chair one of its 12 subcommittees. Of the pair, only Kennedy serves on the energy and water subcommittee now.
In the latest DOE spending bill, the Appropriations panel provided the roughly $700 million the Trump administration sought for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) being built at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. President Donald Trump in September signed into law the legislation covering the budget year that ends Sept. 30, 2019.
After multiple trips to the drawing board, and amid a federal lawsuit by anti-nuclear groups, the National Nuclear Security Administration shouldered UPF into its construction phase in late March.
Also in the fiscal 2019 energy spending bill, Alexander declined to go to bat for licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, for which the Trump administration sought some $170 million at DOE and the NRC. The House had proposed $270 million, but the Senate won the day in spending negotiations and the project was zeroed out again. Alexander did direct DOE in fiscal 2019 to study the viability of creating a privately operated interim storage site for the spent nuclear fuel now marooned at power plants across the country.
Despite his great influence over DOE, Alexander usually did not take a passionate interest in the agency’s nuclear-weapon and waste missions.
“Though Alexander supported the Obama and so far has supported the Trump National Nuclear Security Administration modernization plans, he’s not an ideologue on the issue,” said Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association. “[H]e’s also been a strong supporter of the NNSA nonproliferation mission.”
