The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tiptoed carefully around barbed inquiries from Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) about the Energy Department’s plan to license Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a permanent nuclear waste repository, according to recently released correspondence between the two.
Heller has been prodding DOE and NRC officials about Yucca Mountain practically from the moment the Donald Trump administration announced it would move forward with the project, which then-President Barack Obama effectively canceled in 2010.
To that end, Heller on June 19 sent NRC Commission Chairman Kristine Svinicki eight pointed questions about Yucca Mountain. In a reply dated July 28 — and posted online Monday by the NRC — Svinicki declined to be baited about whether Yucca Mountain was a safe and affordable disposal site for U.S. commercial and defense nuclear waste.
Instead, the newly reappointed NRC commissioner acknowledged again the agency’s request for fiscal 2018 funds to judge DOE’s license application, and acknowledged the hundreds of points of contention the state of Nevada has already raised against that application.
“All contentions admitted for hearing will be resolved before the NRC makes a final determination on the application,” Svinicki wrote.
The Energy Department has not yet resumed its Yucca licensing process, which means the NRC is not yet reviewing the application.
A DOE budget proposal the House of Representatives approved before breaking for August recess provides $120 million for Yucca Mountain, including $30 million for the agency to prepare defense nuclear waste for permanent disposal. The NRC would get $30 million in 2018 to judge the fitness of DOE’s application, should the House’s bill become law.
The Senate’s corresponding bill provides no Yucca money for either DOE or NRC. Instead, the upper chamber’s energy budget would authorize the agency “in the current fiscal year [2018] and subsequent fiscal years, to conduct a pilot program, through 1 or more private sector partners, to license, construct, and operate 1 or more government or privately owned consolidated storage facilities to provide interim storage as needed for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.”
The NRC estimates it would cost about $330 million and take three to five years to vet DOE’s Yucca license. At the end of that process, DOE could if authorized start building the repository, according to Svinicki’s letter to Heller.
