Predicting that the Obama Administration’s decision to abandon the Yucca Mountain project would be reversed by the courts, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, urged Energy Secretary Steven Chu to begin preparing to restart the project at a House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee hearing yesterday. The Administration’s decision to cancel Yucca Mountain drew bipartisan opposition at the hearing as Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), the subcommittee’s chairman, and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) also criticized the decision. “I can’t believe the courts are going to sustain your position,” Dicks told Chu. “You better start looking at these alternatives. You better start figuring how you’re going to start Yucca Mountain moving forward. You just can’t declare something at the executive branch that it’s no longer the law. You’ve got to come to Congress to get the law changed. That hasn’t happened.” Dicks suggested that it could cost $100 million to restart the project.
Frelinghuysen expressed concern that the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget request included funding to implement some of the recommendations made by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. “Congress has not blessed” the recommendations, Frelinghuysen noted. “As the current law of the land is for waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, we need to hear from you if the Administration is proposing any legislative changes to authorize their recommendations.” Chu said that the Administration is willing to work with Congress. “If Congress wants to change the law we would be willing to work with Congress to do that,” he said. “We take the legal obligations very seriously.”