The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not resumed consideration of the Energy Department’s application to license Yucca Mountain as a permanent nuclear waste repository, despite media reports to the contrary sparked by a routine notice published in the federal register Wednesday.
The notice that appeared Wednesday in the federal government’s official journal is essentially a form letter NRC is required to publish every three years because of an arcane federal law known as the paperwork reduction act. The 1995 law requires agencies to get approval from the White House Office of Management and Budget before collecting information from the public.
“It’s a routine extension of a clearance,” an NRC spokesman told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. “We have to issue this every three years. It has nothing to do with restarting the licensing review.”
In this case, NRC was seeking continued approval of its plans to ask state and tribal stakeholders in Nevada how the commission could accommodate their participation in hypothetical future discussions about Yucca Mountain — including a hypothetical resumption of DOE’s application to license the mountain with NRC as a permanent waste repository.
Hypothetical, that is, because despite the Donald Trump administration’s plans for DOE to restart its Yucca Mountain license application, DOE has not yet done so.
The administration has proposed spending a combined $150 million in fiscal year 2018 for DOE and NRC to restart the licensing process the Barack Obama administration stopped in 2010, but that funding is part of a budget proposal Congress must write into law — and lawmakers have not yet held so much as a hearing on next year’s proposed energy budget.
After news reports claiming DOE was restarting the Yucca licensing process started trickling out late Tuesday, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) issued a statement slamming the Trump administration for a move it hadn’t yet made.
A press release posted to Markey’s website Tuesday said the junior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts “today criticized the decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to begin the process to restart the Yucca Mountain licensing process.”
“Restarting the licensing process for Yucca Mountain would reach new heights of scientific irresponsibility,” Markey said in the statement. “The Obama administration was right to stop the licensing process for Yucca Mountain, whose selection was based more on political science than on real science.”
The statement was still posted to Markey’s website at deadline Wednesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
