Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) is reviving legislation aimed at moving the federal government closer to resolving the decades-long impasse over disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste.
Barrasso on Wednesday unveiled the discussion draft of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, which is largely identical to the same-named bill introduced in 2017 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). That legislation garnered strong support as it advanced through the House, but never received a hearing or a vote in the Senate before the 115th Congress expired on Jan. 3 of this year.
The draft bill contains a set of amendments to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act intended to strengthen the federal government’s ability to license and build the geologic repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, along with establish at least one temporary storage site that could consolidate waste held across the country until the disposal facility is ready.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Barrasso, has scheduled a May 1 hearing on the draft legislation. Barrasso did not say when the measure would specifically be introduced in Congress.
“My draft legislation takes commonsense steps to advance the licensing of the Yucca Mountain facility,” Barrasso said in a press release. “The legislation also strengthens the nation’s nuclear waste management program. After years of Washington looking the other way, it’s time to protect American ratepayers and taxpayers.”
Response to the announcement came quickly from supporters and opponents of the Yucca Mountain approach.
Shimkus lauded the bill and indicated he is readying corresponding legislation in the House. “This approach, which addresses the legitimate concerns that interim storage could last forever if action is not simultaneously taken toward a permanent repository, is the only solution to the nation’s nuclear waste management policy that has demonstrated, broad, bipartisan support in the House.”
However, Nevada Sens. Jacky Rosen (D) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D) affirmed the state’s long-held position against being forced to take other states’ nuclear waste. “This half-hatched proposal to trample on Nevada’s rights and revive Yucca Mountain poses a danger to families living in neighboring communities, as scientists have already confirmed Yucca Mountain is unsafe and unfit for nuclear waste storage,” the senators said in a joint statement.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the Department of Energy until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin moving spent fuel from nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations from their points of generation to permanent disposal. Five years later, Congress amended the bill to specify that the waste go into a geologic repository under Yucca Mountain, roughly 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department filed its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, but the proceeding has been largely moribund after being defunded two years later by the Obama administration.
Based on recommendations from a blue-ribbon commission of experts, the Obama DOE initiated a “consent-based” approach to site separate locations for waste from civilian and defense activities. That did not get far before the administration termed out.
Congress denied requests from the Trump administration to resume funding the Yucca Mountain licensing process in fiscal 2018 and the current fiscal 2019. Undeterred, the White House’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal would provide nearly $116 million at DOE and $38.5 million at the NRC for licensing. House and Senate Appropriations committees have not yet indicated whether they will incorporate that funding into their budget bills for the federal fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
The United States now has roughly 100,000 metric tons of radioactive waste stored at DOE sites and nuclear power facilities around the nation – primarily spent fuel at 121 locations in 39 states, according to Barrasso. The federal government has already spent at least $15 billion on research and development of the Yucca Mountain repository, plus $8 billion and counting for failure to meet its legal obligation to take the used fuel off of nuclear utilities’ hands. It has little to show for this spending.
Congress for years has sought various legislative methods to break the logjam, to minimal effect. The Shimkus bill got farther than most nuclear waste measures – it passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on a 49-4 vote in June 2017 and then was forwarded to the Senate by a 340-72 House vote in May 2018. The bill then sat before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The Senate in recent years has been more wary of Yucca Mountain than the House – rejecting appropriations even as the lower chamber met or exceeded White House proposals for licensing. The death of the Shimkus bill was specifically assumed to be connected to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) unwillingness to elevate any legislation that could harm the re-election chances of then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.). Rosen defeated Heller in the November midterms, and Democrats retook control of the House.
Officials on Capitol Hill and other stakeholders this week avoided discussing why the Senate might be taking the lead on the Yucca bill this time, or prognosticating its chances of passage.
The new version of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act contains only “minor, technical” revisions to its predecessor, a spokesperson for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said by email Wednesday.
Among the measures in the discussion draft:
- The secretary of energy would be authorized to enter into an agreement with a private entity for siting, construction, and operation of one or more “monitored retrievable storage” facilities for nuclear waste. Priority would be given to an NRC-licensed private operation “unless the Secretary determines it is faster and less expensive for the Department of Energy … to site, construct, and operate an MRS.”
- Permanent withdrawal of 147,000 acres of federal land in Nye County, Nev., for the Yucca project and transferring authority from the Interior Department to the Energy Department.
- Requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider construction authorization for the repository within 30 months of the bill’s enactment.
- Raising the maximum amount of spent fuel allowed for disposal in the repository from 70,000 metric tons to 110,000 metric tons.
- The energy secretary would be barred from any planning, preparation, or building of a separate repository for defense-only waste until the NRC issues its final ruling on construction of the Yucca repository.
- Directing that economic benefits from spent nuclear fuel retrieval be shared with the state the houses the repository, along with impacted local governments and tribes. This is one of several measures aimed at addressing Nevada’s opposition to the project.
“This is a real positive step out of the Senate,” which has largely been “MIA” on dealing with the country’s nuclear waste dilemma for a decade, one industry source said by email Wednesday.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and a handful of colleagues have twice in recent Congresses sponsored the interim storage-focused “Nuclear Waste Administration Act,” which would have established a new federal organization to manage nuclear waste and a new program to build at least one temporary holding facility for radioactive waste. Alexander, chairman of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, said as recently as March that he hoped to work with panel Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and others to revive the bill.
There was no immediate word this week regarding that planned legislation.
The Alexander plan “hasn’t ever seemed to have any real support from industry because it is fatally flawed in many ways and would do more harm than good,” the source said, citing failures including reliance on “undefined concepts” such as consent-based siting and failing to make a clear link between storage and ultimate disposal.
Two corporate teams have applied for 40-year NRC licenses for interim storage sites for spent fuel. Holtec International hopes to establish underground storage of up to 173,000 metric tons of waste in southeastern New Mexico. An Orano-Waste Control Specialists team wants to build a facility with a maximum capacity of 40,000 metric tons in West Texas. The NRC is expected to rule on both applications by mid-2020.
