Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), chief architect of a massive nuclear-waste policy bill that cleared the House earlier this year, is scheduled Saturday to lead a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers on a tour of Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev.
A House aide confirmed the scheduled trip Monday, but would not disclose the names or number of lawmakers who would accompany Shimkus. The local Las Vegas Review-Journal was the first outlet to report the planned trip.
Yucca Mountain is the proposed site of a permanent nuclear-waste repository which President Donald Trump and Shimkus strongly support, and which top elected officials from Nevada strongly oppose.
Shimkus’ Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018 cleared the House 340- 72 in May, with support from 119 Democrats and all but five Republicans. Broadly, the bill would allow the federal government to more quickly shift the federal land in Nye County to the Department of Energy from its current owner, the Department of the Interior, in order to advance construction of the repository.
Shimuks’ bill also would let the government start planning on a single site for consolidated interim storage of nuclear waste, where spent fuel now stored at nuclear power plants around the nation could be collected and later forwarded to the permanent repository. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will cost a little under $2 billion over the decade ending in 2027.
The White House asked for about $170 million in fiscal 2019 for DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume the Yucca licensing process initiated by the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and defunded by the Barack Obama administration in 2011. In separate appropriations bills passed in June, the House approved $270 million for the proposed repository and the Senate provided nothing.
Yucca Mountain is seen as a political nonstarter in the GOP-controlled Senate, which is clinging to a 51-49 majority in a midterm election year when the vehemently anti-Yucca and electorally vulnerable Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) is defending his seat.
