A Nevada Democrat is outraged at federal nuclear regulators for holding a two-day meeting to reconstitute a library of documents needed to support the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in her state.
President Trump supports the use of the site to store the spent fuel from nuclear power plants. But Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., argued Wednesday that it makes no sense to start that process up again after President Obama ended it.
Titus said the meeting of the advisory board in Rockville, Md., marks “another incredible waste of time and resources” by the Trump administration. She wants the commission to cease all activities related to rebooting the Licensing Support Network for Yucca, which the Obama administration tore down in 2011.
“Until this administration recognizes the need for a consent-based approach to the siting of nuclear waste repositories, long-term storage issues will never be solved,” Titus said. “It’s a fool’s errand to reconstitute the Licensing Support Network without recognizing the need to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act with my consent-based legislation.”
Titus is working to adopt legislation that would put states in control of where a federal nuclear waste repository goes, instead of the 30-year old nuclear waste law that chose Yucca Mountain without the state’s approval, which led to a long, drawn-out fight. Her office told the Washington Examiner that the congresswoman is looking to include her proposal in a House infrastructure bill, but said all vehicles are being considered.
NRC says the reboot of the licensing network, which is a library of documents that form the basis of a license to build Yucca Mountain, is being done in line with a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling. The court deemed the Obama administration acted illegally when it tried to scuttle the waste site.
“The meeting is being held to carry out the NRC’s responsibilities under the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s decision,” according to the commission. A commission memo from July stated that the “next step in the Yucca Mountain licensing process” is for the NRC to initiate a review to reinstitute or replace the licensing network.
Wednesday’s meeting of the commission’s Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel was originally scheduled for last month, but was changed to Feb. 27-28 “to allow more time to evaluate options for the potential reconstitution or replacement of the Licensing Support Network,” the commission said.
