Stakeholders must finally accept that the long-planned, still-unrealized nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain, Nev., is dead and needs to be replaced with a new approach, according to a former senior official with the Department of Energy.
“The sooner everyone agrees to pull the plug on Yucca Mountain, the sooner the United States can move forward on consolidated storage for the next 40 to 50 years, since this is likely the amount of time it will take to bring a long-term repository into operation,” David Klaus wrote in a commentary published Aug. 26 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “This will give the government time to find a new site using a consent-based process.”
Klaus served as DOE deputy undersecretary for management and performance from July 2013 to January 2017, when President Donald Trump was inaugurated. A former counsel for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he is currently an affiliate for Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
It has been 33 years since Congress designated the Yucca Mountain site as the location for geologic disposal of the nation’s inventory of spent fuel from nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from defense nuclear operations. There is now roughly 100,000 metric tons of material waiting for a permanent repository, with roughly 2,000 more metric tons of used fuel generated each year in the United States.
The federal government has spent $15 billion on the Yucca Mountain program, but the repository remains unlicensed and unbuilt. The Department of Energy in 2008 submitted a license application for the facility to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but then-President Barack Obama defunded the proceeding two years later.
Klaus noted that both Trump and his Democratic Party rival in the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden, now oppose Yucca Mountain. The Trump White House sought for three years to secure congressional funding to resume licensing for the site. Congress rejected all three bids, and Trump this year tweeted in support of Nevada’s opposition to the facility and did not seek licensing funding again for the upcoming fiscal 2021. Biden’s opposition dates to his term in the Senate and his eight years as vice president under Obama, according to Klaus.
“The few remaining Yucca Mountain advocates will undoubtedly be reluctant to abandon the project. But in the short term, there is no reason to believe that either Trump or Biden will reverse their announced position following the November election,” according to Klaus.
If the project did go forward, it would require as much as $2 billion annually over two decades to advance licensing, construction, and operations, Klaus projected. He noted Nevada’s deeply held opposition to the facility – the state government has already submitted over 200 contentions for consideration by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should licensing resume. Other federal, state, and local regulators would also be involved if waste shipments ever were to begin, he added.
At least one longtime issue watcher, though, wasn’t buying the case laid out in the commentary.
“If I had a $ for every time someone wrote Yucca Mountain is ‘off the table’ or ‘dead,’ I could retire and never tweet about nuclear waste again,” Jordan Haverly, energy policy lead for Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), tweeted on Monday.
Shimkus is widely acknowledged as the leading voice in the House for moving forward with licensing of the Nevada repository. He is not running for re-election this year.
