A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators should have draft language for a bill to address managing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel “within weeks,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told press on the sidelines of an ARPA-E energy innovation summit yesterday. “I’m encouraged by the open meeting that we had, the four of us on the authorizing and appropriation committees,” Wyden said, referring to Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) who are working to draft the legislation. “We hope to have a draft very quickly and then we’ll have it out for circulation. We’re working in a methodical way to make sure Senators have a chance to comment. But I think we’ll have a draft with respect to nuclear waste pretty shortly. Certainly weeks.” The legislation would address the Obama administration’s nuclear waste strategy, released in January, that set goals of establishing a pilot interim spent fuel storage site by 2021, a larger interim storage site by 2025, and finally a geologic repository by 2048.
Murkowski has said in recent weeks that the group of four Senators has also met with their House counterparts to avoid introducing legislation into one chamber that is destined to fail in the other. House members have been vocal that they want to see any new legislation breathe life back into the Yucca Mountain geologic repository project—shuttered by the Obama administration in 2010. House Energy and Commerce Environmental Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said earlier this year that no interim storage provision will move without a connection to Yucca Mountain. “I know how strongly the House feels on this. We’ve heard that message loud and clear,” Wyden said yesterday. However, he said, “the preponderance of the scientific opinion on this issue is that, no matter how you feel about Yucca Mountain, we’re going to need more than one repository. Maybe that provides the opportunity for some common ground.”
