President Donald Trump on Feb. 21 reaffirmed his administration’s opposition to licensing a nuclear waste disposal facility under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
“I also recently took action on an issue Nevada has been dealing with for over 30 years, Yucca Mountain, you know Yucca Mountain?” Trump said during a rally in Las Vegas. “My budget stops funding for the licensing of waste storage at Yucca Mountain so that we can focus on positive solutions and for much better reasons and alternatives. Why should you have nuclear waste in your backyard?”
Trump did not reference the White House’s requests in its last three consecutive budgets for funding to resume licensing of the geologic repository at the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. For the current fiscal 2020, the two agencies would have received about $150 million. Congress rejected each proposal.
The Obama administration defunded the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding a decade ago. The program has received no new money since then from Capitol Hill.
On Feb. 6, the president tweeted his support for Nevada’s position on Yucca Mountain. The White House confirmed within hours it would not be in its next budget, which was issued on Feb. 10.
For the upcoming fiscal 2021, the White House is instead seeking $27.5 million for a program intended to help establish a program for consolidation and temporary storage of nuclear waste. That Interim Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight effort would involve a “robust” program for interim storage, along with research and development of technologies for storage, transportation, and disposal, according to White House budget documents.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act directed the Energy Department to by Jan. 31, 1998, begin disposal of spent reactor fuel from commercial power plants and high-level waste from federal defense nuclear operations. The law was amended five years later to require the waste be shipped to Yucca Mountain, but the repository has not been licensed or built.
Nevada’s state leaders and members of Congress have for decades fought efforts to build the disposal site, worried about potential dangers to the economy, environment, and residents.
Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) tweeted on Feb. 21 that Nevada residents “completely agree” with Trump’s comments. “While you’re in town, you should declare that you’ll veto any legislation that would undermine Nevada’s ability to stop nuclear waste from being dumped in our backyard.”
Sisolak appeared to be referring to House and Senate versions of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, which include measures to advance both Yucca Mountain and interim storage.
There is now about 100,000 metric tons of radioactive waste stored at points of generation around the country. More than 80,000 metric tons of that total remains at active and retired nuclear plants. Two corporate teams hope by 2021 to receive NRC licenses for separate consolidated interim storage sites in Texas and New Mexico.
Trump spoke the day before the Nevada caucuses for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination contenders, handily won by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, took 47.9% of the vote in Nevada, against 45.5% for Trump.
During the nearly two-hour rally, Trump also said that unidentified countries place nuclear waste on ships, then “float it out into the middle of the ocean. They find a nice deep spot and they dump it. That’s the end of it. But we would never do that for environmental reasons.”
Thirteen nations deposited nuclear and radioactive wastes into the oceans from 1946 to 1993, according to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States was among that group, along with the Soviet Union, Belgium, France, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and other countries. The practice has been banned globally since February 1994.
“I haven’t heard of any countries that are doing dumping in the oceans” today, Edwin Lyman, director of the Nuclear Power Safety Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told RadWaste Monitor.
