Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) on Wednesday placed blame squarely on Democrats for the ongoing freeze in licensing and then building a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev.
“The project boasts support in Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located. So why hasn’t it moved forward? Politics,” Barrasso wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “During the Obama administration, the president and Senate Democratic leadership choked off funding, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stopped work in January 2015. More recently, Democratic senators running for president have opposed the project in an effort to appeal to liberals in Nevada, an early caucus state.”
Just two years after the Department of Energy filed its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the underground disposal site, the Obama administration defunded the entire proceeding. The Trump administration has in the last three budget cycles requested congressional appropriations for both agencies to resume licensing, so far to no avail.
The House supported the last two requests, for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, but ran into opposition from the Senate. However, after retaking the House majority in the November midterm elections, Democrats for fiscal 2020 zeroed out Yucca Mountain licensing funding in an energy appropriations bill now waiting on a floor vote.
In his commentary, Barrasso called for an end to “political games” on Yucca Mountain. The lawmaker noted that he has prepared legislation that would advance both interim storage of radioactive waste and final disposal under Yucca Mountain. The legislation, a lightly modified version of a bill filed by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) in the last Congress, had not been introduced as of deadline Thursday.
Barrasso, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, “looks forward to working to develop bipartisan legislation to strengthen the nation’s nuclear waste management program,” a panel spokesperson said by email Wednesday.
