About a year after it was introduced in the chamber, a bill that would smooth the way to send nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., will get a vote on the House floor Thursday.
Rep. John Shimkus’ (R-Ill.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments (H.R. 3053) cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee last June on a strongly bipartisan 49-4 vote, then sputtered for almost the past six months.
The dam broke last week, when the powerful House Rules Committee, which sets the rules of debate for bills on the House floor, announced it would take up the bill Tuesday in advance of the floor vote.
Members of Nevada’s House delegation, who oppose storing nuclear waste at Yucca, are expected to offer amendments to Shimkus’ bill.
There are now 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel stored at nuclear power plants and former nuclear power plants across the nation. Congress in 1982 gave the Department of Energy until Jan. 31, 1998, to begin disposing of that waste, and five years later designated Yucca Mountain as the sole site for the underground repository.
However, bitter opposition by Nevada, and national politics, have kept the facility from opening. Even with support from the Donald Trump administration, Yucca has run aground in the Senate, where Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has proved a one-man bulwark against the White House’s attempts to get the facility licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
