The Republican-led Congress doesn’t want to waste its chance to finally push nuclear fuel storage, but all roads lead to one barrier: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
At issue is Yucca Mountain, the Nevada waste site that Congress said must be evaluated for use as the nation’s sole repository. Senate Republicans would like to approve Yucca, but they know Reid and Republican Sen. Dean Heller, both of Nevada, and a cadre of Democrats would stand in their way. Reid, although no longer majority leader, is still vehemently opposed to Yucca and is fighting tooth and nail to ensure it’s never built.
Taking up Yucca has gained momentum, said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. He told reporters that there’s “plenty of interest within the Republican caucus.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week completed a safety review that determined storage of long-term waste at Yucca didn’t pose risks.
“Refusing to build Yucca Mountain not only ignores the law, it ignores science,” Alexander said. The Energy Department would need legislation to acquire the land rights for Yucca. Nor does it possess the water rights, a matter for the courts, where the Energy Department has been fighting the state of Nevada.
Getting Democrats on board and surmounting Reid’s over-my-dead-body opposition to Yucca would be difficult.
“This project will never see the light of day and everyone should accept that and move on,” Reid said last week in response to the NRC safety report.
Instead, Alexander said he plans to reintroduce legislation in the next few weeks that wouldn’t mention Yucca. The bill, which last year included co-sponsors Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., calls for interim storage of nuclear waste in hopes of finding a permanent site in a state that would like to host it, rather than have it forced on the place.
The problem with that approach is, again, Yucca.
That’s because House Republicans have been resolute in their demands that the Nevada site remain the nation’s only waste dump, as designated in federal law. Any legislation that might come out of the Senate, even if it doesn’t mention Yucca, would face reconciliation with the House.
“The Nuclear Waste Policy Act states that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ‘shall’ consider Yucca Mountain as our nation’s permanent geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste and that the commission ‘shall’ approve or disapprove the Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain application no less than three years after its submission. ‘Shall’ is not a suggestion,” Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., head of the Energy and Commerce Energy and Environment Subcommittee, wrote in a March 2014 op-ed in Roll Call.
Murkowski said those views would have to be taken into account.
“Some in the House have some very different objectives with how they want to deal with the waste issues. To them, it’s an either-or proposition. I’ve never thought of it that way,” she told reporters.
Alexander acknowledged the split between the House and the Senate, but said it’s best that the two chambers work in “parallel.”
But if Yucca ended up in any final bill, Feinstein said it would make passage difficult among Democrats in the Senate.
“I don’t believe Yucca will pass. There have been lots of questions, some of which are answered by the NRC in their safety report. However, the people in the state don’t want it. And that’s the lesson — this has to go to where the state wants the facility. And that’s not impossible,” Feinstein told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t think you can long term force this on people.”
Alexander said he thinks enough Democrats could come on board. Several Democrats represent states and districts where nuclear waste is piling up at reactor sites, and utility customers have paid hefty fees to the Energy Department for the permanent repository. Federal courts ordered the department to stop collecting the fees in 2013, which totaled $31 billion.
If Democrats do come on board, it’s doubtful there would be enough of them to override a veto from President Obama. The president pulled the plug on NRC reviews of Yucca in 2009 before a federal court forced the nuclear regulator to restart its assessment.
One of the five Republicans who voted in favor of an amendment to Keystone XL legislation that said humans contribute “significantly” to climate change, Alexander said smoothing a path for nuclear waste disposal could encourage development of more nuclear power, which doesn’t generate the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for warming the planet.
“I hear a lot of talk from Democrats about climate change. And if nuclear power provides 60 percent of our carbon-free electricity and we have to have nuclear waste to have nuclear power and Yucca Mountain by law and by science is the place to put the waste, that’s a pretty strong argument,” Alexander said.
