The Senate approved a pair of Democratic nominees Tuesday to fill out the federal agency that regulates the nation’s nuclear power and waste.
Stephen G. Burns and Jeffery M. Baran are the newest members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after earning votes of 60-40 and 56-44, respectively. The move brings the commission’s split to three Democrats — chairwoman Allison Macfarlane being the other one — and two Republicans.
Burns, who will serve a term that runs through June 30, 2019, was most recently head of legal affairs with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency. He is also a former NRC general counsel.
Baran’s term would run through June 30. He was most recently Democratic energy and environment staff director for House Energy and Commerce Committee under ranking member Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
The commissioners will be faced with several challenges, including overseeing implementation of post-Fukushima safety measures, licensing of next-generation “small modular reactors” and the ongoing debate over what to do with nuclear waste that is piling up at reactors across the country.
The NRC recently said such waste could be stored on-site “indefinitely.” Republicans, however, have pushed to move it to the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
A federal court ruled the NRC must process an application to use the site as a long-term waste dump — it stopped in 2010, with strong backing from Yucca opponent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. — though the commission says it doesn’t have enough money to finish the review.
House Republicans, however, say Yucca must be the nation’s nuclear waste repository, as called for in a 1982 federal law. In the past, they have voted to give the NRC more money to complete the review.
Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner that Yucca is something Republicans would “revisit” if they gained Senate control in the November elections.
Reid, though, laughed off the prospects of Yucca being a solution during a Tuesday press conference at the Capitol, saying the project is “through.”
The Obama administration and some Senate Republicans and Democrats have proposed taking applications for other sites to store the nation’s nuclear waste while providing options for intermediately storing it until such a location is approved.
