While President-elect Donald Trump has yet to offer an official stance on the canceled nuclear waste geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, speculation that the next administration will revive the project persists around Washington, D.C.
Sources close with the Trump transition team say his still-developing administration is exploring restarting the project licensing process with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which was canceled by the Obama administration in 2010.
A bipartisan panel of experts discussed Yucca’s prospects under Trump on Monday during an event at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C. The discussion mostly focused on energy policy under the next administration, and Scott Segal, a partner at energy and power lobbying group Bracewell, addressed Yucca Mountain.
“I do think this administration is going to be very helpful to the nuclear sector, and I think some of the challenges in nuclear, including coming up with a solution for waste, revisiting Yucca and other issues, as well,” Segal said.
According to multiple media reports last week, the Department of Energy remains opposed to Yucca Mountain, describing the site as “unworkable” in briefing documents to Trump’s transition team. DOE has repeatedly used that term to describe the project, given that the department does not hold the proper land and water rights to proceed.
Meanwhile, DOE is moving forward with plans to release a draft consent-based nuclear waste siting process before the end of 2016. The consent-based siting program is the Obama administration’s replacement for the Yucca Mountain project. That program emphasizes a need for consolidated interim nuclear waste storage leading up to the long-term development of a national repository.
Longtime Yucca Mountain opponent Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who is retiring in January, has repeatedly asserted that the project remains dead, arguing it would be a massive waste of money to resume NRC licensing proceedings.
The NRC has spent about $12 million of Nuclear Waste Fund money on Yucca licensing activities since 2013, and the state of Nevada estimates DOE will need $1.7 billion in funding and NRC $330 million in funding for the licensing process that remains.
In his goodbye speech to Reid on Thursday morning, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) said he would maintain the fight to prevent Nevada from becoming the U.S. nuclear waste dump in contravention of the will of the state’s residents.
“Harry, rest assured, I will continue to fight Yucca,” Heller said.
The topic also came up Thursday at the NRC’s Division of Spent Fuel Management Regulatory Conference in Rockville, Md., where former NRC Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection Director Larry Camper asked a panel for the best way to stress the importance of interim nuclear waste storage to the new administration.
DOE Nuclear Fuels Storage and Transportation acting team lead Melissa Bates responded, “I believe the approach that we’re trying to take is remaining flexible, adaptable, having as many options on the table as possible, really trying to put together a system such that if one thing doesn’t work, you have option B, C, and D right behind it.”
