President-elect Trump’s nominee to lead the Energy Department told a Senate committee Thursday that he is committed to finding a solution to the fight over whether to use Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump, and said he would look at alternative sites that are “outside of what we have historically looked at before.”
Former Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry addressed Yucca Mountain at his first confirmation hearing held one day before Trump is sworn in as the 45th president.
The Obama administration attempted to close the waste dump as a favor to then-Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, until states sued and won to reverse the decision as contrary to the country’s 30-year-old nuclear waste policy law.
“My commitment is and my hope is we have as a legacy…, this committee, this Congress this administration, for Americans, that we finally after 30 years of kicking the can down the road, for whatever reason, start seeing clear definitive evidence of addressing this issue and moving to temporary and or permanent siting of this nuclear waste.”
The government has an obligation under the nuclear waste law to build a permanent waste repository at Yucca Mountain to begin moving the waste piling up at nuclear power plants and Cold War weapons facilities.
The Yucca waste dump was meant to reduce the liability of industry or states taking on the project themselves.
