
Christopher Wright, the energy executive President-elect Donald Trump chose to lead the Department of Energy, wants to find a permanent storage site for radioactive waste, he said Tuesday in a Senate hearing.
“I will work with you and with Senators across the country to find solutions for long-term disposal of nuclear waste and I agree with you that a central part of that is going to be local buy-in on the project,” Wright told Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Cortez Masto is the face in the Senate of Nevada politicians’ unbending opposition to disposing of high level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from power plants at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev. President Barack Obama (D) defunded the project in 2011 but it remains congressionally authorized.
At Wright’s nomination hearing on Wednesday, Cortez Masto twice pressed Trump’s secretary-designate “to acknowledge that the failed Yucca Mountain project is unworkable,” saying that Trump himself opposes storage of radioactive waste in Nevada.
Wright would not, in so many words.
“I think if you’re going to build large infrastructure, and nuclear waste disposal would certainly fall in that category, that has concerns, you need to have onboard the local community as well,” Wright said. “And I think Nevadans, and as you’ve expressed clearly, have deep concerns about seeing that facility go ahead and I think that’s your answer.”
Republicans have a majority on the committee and in the Senate, so they can advance Wright’s nomination without any support from Democrats. Nominees for cabinet positions need only a simple majority, in committee and on the Senate floor, to be confirmed for their posts in the executive branch.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had not scheduled a vote on Wright’s nomination at deadline this week for RadWaste Monitor.