In the state’s latest attempt to kill the project for good, Nevada this week asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to end the long-idled licensing review of the U.S.’s only congressionally-designated storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.
Gov. Steve Sisolak’s (D) request, if approved by NRC, would re-open licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain site so that Nevada could formally ask that the proceedings be brought to a close.
According to NRC, the licensing process was suspended by an agency order in September 2011 due to “budgetary limitations” brought about by the Barack Obama administration’s decision to cut Department of Energy funding for the Yucca Mountain project.
If the case is reopened, Nevada plans to file a separate motion asking NRC to toss its licensing review of the Nye County, Nev., repository, Sisolak said.
The state wants NRC to consider “three Nevada motions for summary disposition and, depending on how the Commission rules on the summary disposition motions, a motion to disapprove the issuance of the construction authorization.”
A spokesperson for NRC confirmed Tuesday that the agency had received Sisolak’s request. The commission’s five-member executive committee, which would be responsible for considering such a request, had not announced any decision about the request as of Friday.
The governor cited the Department of Energy’s “failure to obtain necessary ownership and controls over land” and airspace around Yucca Mountain, as well as the department’s refusal to assess the effects of climate change on the proposed repository, as “clearly uncontested facts” that support the state’s proposal to do away with licensing proceedings.
The Department of Energy is “aware” of Sisolak’s filing, an agency spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor Wednesday, and is “considering its response.”
“Nevada believes strongly that the time has come to put this long-dormant and unproven Federal project out of its misery so that Nevada can devote its attention and resources to other matters and the United States can move on to consider other more viable solutions for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste,” Sisolak said.
Members of Nevada’s congressional delegation including Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who like Sisolak is up for election in November’s midterms, applauded Sisolak for his motion in a statement Tuesday.
“I support Nevada’s efforts to end the licensing process for Yucca Mountain,” Cortez Masto said, “and I will continue to work with all stakeholders at the federal, state, local, and Tribal levels to find a safe, workable, and consent-based alternative.”
Yucca Mountain, approved in 1987 by Congress to be the nation’s permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, has yet to receive a single waste shipment. The Barack Obama administration pulled the site’s funding in 2010 amid political pressure from the Nevada congressional delegation, notably Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Despite an ill-fated attempt in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump to restart Yucca Mountain, the site remains unfinished today, and the Joe Biden administration has committed not to fund the project for anything more than physical security.
