The House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled Tuesday to consider legislation intended to advance storage and disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, from Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), is one of 18 bills due for markup starting at 10 a.m.
The bill contains various amendments to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act intended to finally bring the long-planned radioactive-waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., into being. They include: permanent withdrawal of the federal Yucca Mountain property for U.S. Department of Energy use for the repository; prioritizing use of the land for the disposal project; and increasing the legal maximum disposal from 70,000 metric tons to 110,000 metric tons.
The McNerney legislation would also authorize the Department of Energy to develop one or more “monitored retrievable storage” facilities that could hold used fuel from nuclear power plants until the repository is ready. The agency would also be authorized to contract with a federally licensed commercial operation for storage of DOE-owned civilian waste.
The bill is an updated version of legislation filed in 2017 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), which was passed out of the House last year but never got a vote in the Senate. The Energy and Commerce environment and climate change subcommittee advanced the McNerney proposal to the full panel in September.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is preparing corresponding legislation in the Senate, but has not yet filed that measure.
