Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
4/3/2015
With Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announcing last week his impending retirement at the end of 2016, it appears Yucca Mountain could receive a jolt of energy to rise from its shuttered status, industry and congressional sources told RW Monitor this week. Reid, one of Yucca Mountain’s staunchest opponents, has served as a Nevada Senator for 28 years. From 2009 to 2014 he served as the Senate’s majority leader, where used his political will to help orchestrate Yucca Mountain’s demise. But, without Reid’s shadow looming over the project, some this week said that members of the Senate could begin to vote without fear of political retribution, opening the door for Yucca’s re-emergence. "There’s no question this is an encouraging sign for this Congress as well as in future Congresses in terms of nuclear waste policy,” a Congressional aide told RW Monitor. “The reason this strengthens the hand is that there really were dwindling reasons to oppose Yucca Mountain, and one of those just fell by the way-side. Its federal law, and the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] report showed that on a scientific level there’s no reason for an environmental safety concern. Where we are at now is there are Senate Democrats who once viewed Reid as the majority leader indefinitely and that put political pressure there. So, the only reason to oppose it was a political calculation, and that is now changing.”
One industry official reiterated the predicted effects of removing a Reid blockade would have on Yucca Mountain. “Everybody knows the only reason that we haven’t been able to move forward with Yucca Mountain is because of Harry Reid,” the official told RW Monitor. “I think that senators like Patty Murray (D-Wash.) who are staunch supporters of Yucca Mountain are now free to vote their constituents’ interest rather than Harry Reid’s interests.”
Yucca Gaining Momentum Elsewhere
Momentum towards a solution in Congress on nuclear waste policy has been growing since the year began. House Republicans, led by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), have announced plans to introduce legislation soon that would incentivize Nevada into hosting a nuclear waste repository, mainly through infrastructure and economic boosts. On the Senate side, Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) has voiced his support for Yucca Mountain, and has said that in conjunction with interim storage, funding for the project could make the Senate’s final appropriations legislation for next year. Alexander also introduced last week with bi-partisan support a bill that would overhaul the nation’s nuclear waste policy and allow the construction of a pilot interim storage facility, among other things. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, meanwhile, has released the Safety Evaluation Report on Yucca Mountain, which found the repository design meets most regulatory safety requirements.
Nevada’s Sen. Heller Vows to Keep Up Yucca Opposition
Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), however, promised this week to continue Reid’s effort to keep the project shuttered. “I think it’s over. I think the discussion has been had over the last 20 years, and I think it’s over. Yucca’s dead. We’re going to move on,” he told reporters after a meeting in Nevada, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper. “I’ll continue to push that narrative just like Senator Reid and Senator [Richard] Bryan before me. But I do not see any efforts, any issues, that is going to revive Yucca Mountain as a viable place to put nuclear waste. Can I stop it? I will do everything in my capacity to do so.”
House Lawmakers Schedule Yucca Visit Next Week
In an effort to build momentum for reviving Yucca Mountain, Shimkus will visit the site next week on April 9 with a group of fellow lawmakers. Reps. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), Bob Latta (R-Ohio), Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.), Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) will join Shimkus on the tour, the Congressman announced this week. “Our nation desperately needs to advance our nuclear waste strategy, and Yucca Mountain is a part of the solution,” Shimkus said in a statement this week. “This journey back to the desert will help guide our work this Congress to put our nuclear future back on track. I’m hopeful that by working in partnership with Nevada we can find a workable path forward for Yucca.”
Yucca as a Defense Waste-Only Repository?
As Yucca Mountain enjoys a renewed momentum, in light of the news last week on the Department of Energy’s plans to de-comingle defense and commercial waste, the question emerged if Yucca Mountain could serve as a defense waste-only repository. Defense waste has a finite inventory, as well as easier repository design requirements and cooler temperature ranges that could make siting and construction easier, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said last week. A defense waste repository then could serve as a form of compromise, in which Yucca Mountain still can be used to help solve the nation’s nuclear waste problem while Nevada would not have to take the hotter and larger supply of commercial waste. A legislative amendment would be needed for the re-purposing of the site, which could prove problematic.
When asked about the idea of using Yucca Mountain as a defense repository, Bob Halstead, Nevada’s executive director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects, shot down any idea of Nevada storing or disposing high-level waste. “Clearly, the governor’s position is that we support the Blue Ribbon Commission and consent-based siting. With that said, we are not going to consent to any spent fuel or high-level waste storage or disposal in Nevada, period,” Halstead said. “The concerns about the thermal environment, the waste packaging performance, and the role of drip shields would be different from, and equally complicated to the analysis that DOE had to put in their license for a comingled repository. So that argument, that it’s technically easier to dispose defense waste in Yucca Mountain, is not valid.”
DOE, for its part, has maintained that consent is key to any siting process. “We’re committed to a consent-based siting process that will ensure public trust and confidence in decision-making throughout the process,” a DOE spokesman said this week when asked if Yucca Mountain could serve as a defense waste repository.
