In approving a very-short-term federal appropriations bill this week, Congress postponed a possible tussle over funding for the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Several federal agencies are still waiting on a full budget for fiscal 2019, operating on a continuing resolution since Oct. 1. That bill expires today. Rather than try to hammer out a follow-on spending plan this week alongside the funeral for former President George H.W. Bush, the House and Senate on Thursday simply signed off on a two-week extension to Dec. 21. President Donald Trump signed the bill early Friday.
There have been rumors, so far unconfirmed, that end-of-year budget legislation could include money to resume licensing for the long-planned underground disposal site in Nye County, Nev., for spent fuel from U.S. commercial nuclear reactors and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations.
How much money, and the means by which the bill might provide it, are among the questions surrounding this speculation.
The Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are, respectively, the applicant and the adjudicator for a license to build and operate the repository in Nevada. Both are already funded through Sept. 30, 2019, in a multi-agency appropriations bill signed into law in September. Congress, though, zeroed out the Trump administration’s request to provide money for the agencies to resume the Yucca Mountain licensing process suspended by its predecessor nearly a decade ago – just as it did during the prior budget cycle.
The Nevada congressional delegation has been at the center of this battle for decades – uniformly opposing making their state home to other states’ nuclear waste. Lawmakers from the Silver State in recent days have again urged House and Senate leaders from both parties to ensure the repository gets nothing in the next budget negotiations.
“As the Senate works with the House to craft an FY19 Appropriations Omnibus, we respectfully ask you to oppose any efforts and funding requests to restart the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project in our home state of Nevada. Considering the FYI 9 Energy & Water Appropriations bill has already been signed into law, we see no reason to include funding for Yucca Mountain in an omnibus package,” according to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Sen.-elect Jacky Rosen (both D-Nev.).
The two raised their concerns in a Nov. 30 letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.); Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee; and Dianne Feinstein, ranking member of the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee.
Earlier last week, Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) sent a similar message to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and the top members from each party on the lower chamber’s Appropriations Committee.
A spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee said this week the full-year bill remains under negotiation. “We cannot comment or speculate on specifics at this time.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee did not respond to a query on the matter.
Other sources on Capitol Hill did not cite any specific push to revive Yucca Mountain in the current round of budget talks.
One congressional staffer said the new expressions of concern from Nevada’s delegation on Capitol Hill do not necessarily mean there is a firm proposal. The issue pretty much comes up in every budget cycle, and Nevada’s politicians inevitably take steps to head it off.
Any new money for the project would fall under restrictions on discretionary spending under the 2011 Budget Control Act. That would require that the amount of money be fully offset elsewhere in the budget, one Senate aide noted.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a coalition of labor unions and other nongovernmental organizations on Wednesday had their own thoughts on the matter – one largely in opposition to the message from Nevada.
“Another year without progress on the Yucca Mountain repository license application and consolidated interim storage in untenable. It is time for the federal government to meet its statutory and contractual obligations,” the 15 organizations said in a Dec. 4 letter to the Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act directed DOE to begin disposal of tens of thousands of tons of used fuel by Jan. 31, 1998. It also established a Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for that repository, which a 1987 amendment to the legislation designated be built under Yucca Mountain.
Nuclear utilities paid in excess of $40 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund before the Obama administration halted collections, under federal court order, in 2014. The federal government itself has spent $15 billion on studying and developing the site, without much to show for that money.
The NRC is reviewing two separate license applications for interim facilities in New Mexico and Texas that could be used to consolidate the spent fuel until the permanent repository is ready. That would, theoretically, resolve the Energy Department’s liability under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
In the interim, and the U.S. government has paid more than $7 billion in damages to power companies that signed “Standard Contracts” through which they would pay into the Nuclear Waste Fund with the understanding that DOE would meet its waste disposal mandate. The Energy Department estimates its remaining liability could approach $30 billion.
“Now is the time to end the stalemate, and for the House and Senate to work in a bipartisan manner to place the federal government on a path to fulfill its responsibilities and to unburden taxpayers of the ever-mounting liability by establishing a durable program for managing used fuel,” the Chamber of Commerce and its peers said.
Along with the Chamber, signatories to the letter included the Nuclear Energy Institute, the American Nuclear Society, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, the National Association of Manufacturers, and North America’s Building Trades Unions.
In their own letter Thursday to the Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress, dozens of nuclear and environmental advocacy groups made a pitch against near-term funding for the Nevada site.
“Nuclear waste is a national challenge of profound import, but the waste – in any scenario – will not be
moving anywhere for years,” according to groups including the Sierra Club, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, the Nuclear Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace. “Therefore, it should be incumbent on Congress to fix problems in a meaningful fashion, not attempt an expedient solution in a lame duck session that is destined to fail, again.”
