Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/26/2015
The Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee has delayed its hearing on pending nuclear waste legislation until Aug. 4. The committee had planned to hold a hearing on the legislation in early July, but it appears to have postponed the hearing. Calls to committee were not returned this week.
The bill was introduced by Committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D- Wash.), along with Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), as an effort to overhaul the nation’s nuclear waste management strategy.. The bill includes language that would create a new federal waste management organization to take over spent nuclear fuel disposal from the Department of Energy, allow the construction of a consent-based pilot interim storage facility, and establish a new working capital fund in the U.S. Treasury where fees collected from the utilities would be deposited and which would not depend on the approval of Congressional appropriators. It also would provide DOE the ability to build additional consolidated interim storage facilities within 10 years, but after 10 years a site for a permanent repository would need to be selected.
