President-elect Donald Trump is exploring restarting the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in Nevada, a source close to the Trump transition team told RadWaste Monitor on Tuesday.
The source, who requested anonymity, said that if the Trump administration resumes the Department of Energy licensing process with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it would likely mean reviving DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the entity that was charged with carrying out disposal of spent nuclear fuel as laid out in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Following re-establishment of that office, which was stripped of funding in fiscal 2011 as the Obama administration halted the Yucca Mountain project, it would likely take six months to a year to resume the licensing process, according to the source. The subsequent NRC review could take about three years.
Republican lawmakers in the House Energy and Commerce Committee have been pushing for the Energy Department to restart Yucca Mountain proceedings. Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and panel member Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) urged Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in March to “expeditiously” resume the licensing process. They also sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), asking for a congressional audit to see what financial resources are available to the NRC should the licensing process resume. The GAO findings are expected in the spring.
The NRC last week formalized plans to spend $700,000 of $1.27 million in its remaining Yucca Mountain funds to update repository analysis documents, placing the agency in a better position should licensing activities resume.
The NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, which is composed of administrative judges who are lawyers, engineers and scientists, conducts the agency’s adjudicatory hearings. The panel appointed multiple three-judge boards to hear a variety of contentions regarding licensing application. The board admitted about 300 contentions to the Yucca project before the proceeding was suspended in 2011. If the adjudication were to resume, one or more boards would review evidence and issue decisions on admitted issues or the NRC staff’s decision to adopt the DOE environmental impact statement. Parties are allowed to request that the commission review board decisions, and the commission’s final decision can be appealed to a U.S. Court of Appeals. The NRC has spent about $12 million of Nuclear Waste Fund money on Yucca licensing activities since 2013
Longtime Yucca Mountain opponent Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who is retiring in January, reiterated his stance on Monday.
“If the Republicans want to start off by spending a lot of money … let them go to Yucca Mountain,” Reid told reporters, according to The Hill. “It’s doomed to failure. To get Yucca Mountain up and running again … they better put multiple billions of dollars.”
Shimkus in his own statement this week said he is “excited to work with the Trump Administration and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to quickly restore funding to continue the licensing process, as well as pass comprehensive nuclear waste management legislation for his signature.”
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval said the state will continue to fight against a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “It won’t change my position on Yucca Mountain,” the newspaper quoted Sandoval as saying. “As far as I am concerned the state will continue to aggressively oppose the siting of storage of high-level nuclear waste there.”
According to Nevada’s anti-Yucca Mountain Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state plans to fully adjudicate 218 admitted contentions in opposition to the DOE license application for Yucca Mountain and submit 30 to 50 new contentions, based on new information and the NRC’s environmental impact statement supplement, which the regulator completed earlier this year. Those contentions challenge Yucca Mountain’s site suitability, disposal concept, groundwater impacts, rail access, and impacts on Las Vegas. Nevada estimates that the NRC will need 400 hearing days to adjudicate 250 contentions, a process that could take four to five years, when accounting for potential motions and appeals. The state estimates DOE will need $1.7 billion in funding and NRC $330 million in funding for the licensing process that remains.
