The House is scheduled to vote next week on legislation that would move forward a long-stalled plan to store the nation’s nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
The bill would direct the Energy Department to authorize an interim storage program before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission completes the licensing process for Yucca.
[The quiet fight to finally send nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain]
It would establish a time limit for the commission to approve the project and would make a necessary land transfer.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., announced the pending vote. The committee approved the bill in June on a 49-4 vote.
“Following last summer’s 49-4 vote out of the committee, bipartisan legislation to get our nation’s nuclear waste management policy back on track is heading to the House floor next week,” Walden and Shimkus said Thursday. “We owe it to the 121 communities across 39 states, as well as to every American taxpayer forced to shoulder the daily $2.2 million burden of inaction, to get this done.”
The federal government three decades ago chose Yucca Mountain to serve as the repository for all of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.
Spent nuclear fuel currently sits idle in 121 communities across 39 states, Walden and Shimkus say, because the country lacks a permanent repository.
Yucca Mountain is the nation’s only approved geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste.
The site, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was chosen by the Energy Department to eventually store spent fuel from nuclear power plants, U.S. Navy reactors, and waste generated from building nuclear weapons.
But opposition from Nevada lawmakers has stalled the 30-year effort to develop the Yucca site.
[Nevada Democrat slams ‘waste of time’ meeting to reboot Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump]
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a major foe, formed an alliance with the Obama administration to block funding and stack the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with Yucca opponents.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s budget proposal for fiscal 2019 includes $110 million for restarting the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain project and $10 million to study interim storage sites until the repository is completed.
