U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) joined three of his House colleagues on a trip to Yucca Mountain last week to argue his case against building a nuclear waste repository on the federal property in his state.
“I visited Yucca Mountain today to ensure the information shared by the Department of Energy was as accurate as possible and to ask tough questions, holding the Department accountable to the people of Nevada,” Horsford said in a press release after the Aug. 2 site visit. “I will continue to push back on the Department’s claims that Yucca Mountain is safe and ensure my colleagues are given factual information about the dangers of nuclear waste disposal.”
Horsford represents the 4th Congressional District in central Nevada, including Nye County, where the geologic repository would be built. Joining him on the trip were Reps. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), Mike Levin (D-Calif.), and Bill Flores (R-Texas).
Peters and Levin both represent the San Diego area, home to the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), which holds about 3.5 million pounds of spent reactor fuel assemblies in wet and dry storage.
The Energy Department is legally responsible for finding a permanent home for that material, along with the used fuel from all other U.S. nuclear power plants. Levin, in his first term, has been particularly focused on safety at SONGS – including moving its radioactive waste off-site as soon as possible, per legislation filed in May.
Flores is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and has been a vocal advocate of finally resolving the decades-long impasse over disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste. Peters also sits on the committee, which has jurisdiction over nuclear waste-related legislation.
The George W. Bush administration Energy Department in 2008 filed its license application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate the Yucca Mountain repository. The Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later, and it has remained moribund for the better part of a decade.
The Trump administration for three successive budgets has sought funding to revive licensing. Congress has yet to appropriate any money for DOE or the NRC for that purpose. The House has already approved a fiscal 2020 budget bill that zeroes out the request for Yucca Mountain; the Senate has not yet issued any appropriations legislation for the fsical year that begins Oct. 1.
Meanwhile, there has been an increased focus on interim storage as a means for the Energy Department to meet its legal mandate to remove used reactor fuel from nuclear power plants. The deadline for that to begin, under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, was Jan. 31, 1998.
Supporters of the Yucca Mountain approach say decades of research has proven the isolated desert site about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas has been proven geologically and seismically safe to house radioactive waste underground forever. State and federal leaders from Nevada have never accepted that, pointing to earthquakes last month in neighboring California as illustrating the hazard.
“I respect that my colleagues want to see nuclear waste removed from their communities, but they also have a duty as federal lawmakers to maintain the safety of all Americans. Yucca Mountain does not maintain the safety of Nevadans, who neither produce nor consume nuclear energy,” Horsford said in the release.
Horsford’s office did not respond to requests for additional detail about the trip to Yucca Mountain. Levin and Flores were both traveling internationally this week and not available to discuss the matter, their offices said. Peters also did not respond to queries.
As in past Congresses, lawmakers this year have submitted a number of bills offering different approaches for storage and disposal of radioactive waste.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is due in September to consider some of those measures, including the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019 from Reps. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) and John Shimkus (R-Ill.), the Nevada Independent reported Monday. The bill is an updated version of legislation spearheaded by Shimkus in 2017 that was voted out of the House but never got a Senate vote before the 115th Congress ended. It features a series of measures aimed at reducing obstacles to the federal government establishing permanent disposal of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, while also setting a path for interim storage.
Congress is in recess until Sept. 9. The House Energy and Commerce website does not have a listing for the hearing, and a committee staffer said no information was available yet
The Independent reported that members of Nevada’s senators continue to negotiate with the sponsors of a nuclear waste bill in the upper chamber to add language that would require the state’s consent to advance Yucca Mountain.
The Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019, from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and several colleagues, is also a new version of legislation that failed to pass in two prior Congresses. If approved this time, it would create a new organization to manage development of waste storage and disposal facilities; mandate a pilot storage facility for priority waste, one for nonpriority waste, and at least one permanent repository; and ensure communities determined “whether, and on what terms” they allow a nearby waste site.
However, that consent language is not applied directly to Yucca Mountain – a situation the state’s lawmakers hope they can change via an amendment to the bill.
