By John Stang
U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) is working on a legislative measure to require state and local consent before the federal government can proceed with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in her state.
This legislation would be an amendment to the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019, said Robert Halstead, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. Halstead referred follow-up questions on the amendment to Cortez Masto’s office.
Staff for Cortez Masto and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) this week did not respond to requests for elaboration on the amendment.
The bill, introduced in April by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) requires state, local, and tribal consent for any new radioactive waste site. However, it does not apply that directly to Yucca Mountain, which Congress in 1987 made the sole legal location for a federal waste repository.
The Department of Energy in 2008 applied for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate an underground disposal facility about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas for spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. The Obama administration defunded the proceeding in 2010. The Trump administration has twice asked Congress for appropriations to resume licensing, and has twice been rejected. Nonetheless, it is seeking more than $150 million for the work at the two agencies in fiscal 2020.
The Nuclear Waste Administration Act, an updated version of legislation introduced in 2013 and 2015, is intended to help jump-start the federal government’s efforts to meet its congressional directive to provide permanent disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste.
Among its measures, the 2019 bill would: establish a new federal organization responsible for siting, licensing, building, and operating waste facilities; direct construction of a pilot storage facility for priority waste, at least one storage site for nonpriority waste, and at least one permanent repository for the waste; require that communities determine “whether, and on what terms” they will accept a waste site; and create a five-person Nuclear Waste Oversight Board that would manage funding for the projects in two separate accounts.
During a June 27 hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, there was some discussion that the bill’s requirement for state, local, and tribal consent does not extend to Yucca Mountain.
Then-Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn (R) in 2002 submitted a veto of the Yucca project to Congress, as allowed under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Congress subsequently overrode that veto. Nevada leadership at the state and federal level has continued to contest the waste site, which has more support among nearby communities.
In March, Cortez Masto introduced separate legislation that would prohibit the Department of Energy from using the Nuclear Waste Fund for planning, building or repository without a consent agreement with the host state and all impacted local governments. That bill is currently in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The latest Nuclear Waste Administration Act, which Murkowski sponsored with Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), as of this week is still in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Murkowski chairs the panel.
So far, the current Congress has not indicated it intends to fund licensing for Yucca Mountain. The nearly $1 trillion minibus appropriations bill passed in the House last month covered DOE and the NRC, but zeroed out their requests for the project. Instead, it would provide $47.5 million for separate integrated waste management activities, focusing on consolidated interim storage of spent fuel.
The overall Senate energy and water appropriations bill that would fund DOE and the NRC has not been introduced, with no date set yet to do so, according to the office of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).
Meanwhile, a pair of California earthquakes on July 5 stirred some new congressional debate about how susceptible a Yucca Mountain repository would be to a seismic event. The two quakes — measuring 6.4 and 7.1 on the Richter scale — occurred in the Death Valley area.
“The recent train derailments (in Nevada) and earthquakes serve as stark reminders of how dangerous it would be to make our state the dumping ground for the nation’s nuclear waste.,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Env.) said by email.
But Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), a vocal proponent of Yucca Mountain, disagreed. “If anything, the recent California earthquake should accelerate the discussion of Yucca Mountain because earthquakes are felt more on the surface than below ground,” he said in an emailed statement. “In the event of a future seismic event, spent nuclear fuel would be safer 1,000 feet below Yucca Mountain than it would be on the surface at 121 locations around the country — particularly those locations within the Ring of Fire along California’s coast.”
Shimkus added that the NRC safety evaluation report on Yucca Mountain’s design found any risk of earthquake damage to be miniscule. The report put that chances of a “low-probability, high-risk” earthquake at one in 100 million
“Those who disagree with that analysis have the opportunity to have their contentions adjudicated before a panel of judges, scientists, and engineers through the NRC licensing process,” Shimkus said.
According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, there are faults across the state. Nevada had eight earthquakes in the magnitude of 6.0 to 7.1 from 1915 to 2008, with four occurring in 1954. The biggest was in 1954 at Fairview Peak which registered at 7.1.