The 2-2 vote by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week not to withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application means the project isn’t dead, Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office Director Darrell Lacy said. The decision has been awaited for over 14 months. The NRC was asked on June 30, 2010 to rule on whether to support a request by the U.S. Department of Energy to withdraw the construction authorization application.
A fight over Yucca Mountain was averted in Congress on Wednesday when an Illinois senator dropped plans for an amendment to revive the Nevada nuclear waste site. A spokesman said U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk decided not to move forward on the proposal, which was being closely watched by officials in various states and energy interest groups, and had sparked pushback from Nevada’s senators. Kirk, a Republican whose state has the most commercial nuclear power plants and which stores the most spent nuclear fuel, had not formally submitted an amendment during this week’s Senate debate on a 2012 energy and water spending bill. But he said he planned to, and his intent was to put the Yucca project on life support through the 2012 elections, when Republicans may capture control of the Senate and /or the White House and be in a position to resurrect the project that has been terminated by President Barack Obama.
Congress for the second consecutive year is zeroing out spending for the Yucca Mountain project. A catch-all 2012 spending bill that passed over the weekend contained no funding for the controversial Nevada repository site that now is shrinking in the rear-view mirror as lawmakers prepare to review new recommendations for managing highly radioactive used nuclear fuel. “Once again, Congress will not appropriate a single dime to make Nevada the nation’s dumping ground for nuclear waste,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “Yucca Mountain was never a good idea and it’s time to move on towards real solutions that ensure Americans’ health and safety,” Reid said.
“As far as the Department of Energy is concerned, they’ve taken this program off the table. They’ve terminated the project. There is no longer a staff, by statute there is still an Office of Radioactive Waste Management,” Halstead said. Congress zeroed out its appropriations for the project this fiscal year and the upcoming year, he said. DOE moved to withdraw the license application. The state conducted polling every two years, Halstead said, the 2010 poll showed 63 percent of the respondents would vote against Yucca Mountain if given the chance, only 32 percent would vote for it. He said that’s consistent with the results of every poll.
Members of Congress continue to work at cross-purposes on nuclear waste, advancing bills with differing visions of whether highly radioactive materials should be stored at Yucca Mountain. The Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee approved a U.S. Department of Energy bill last Wednesday that contains $35 million to resume licensing and other work for a nuclear repository at the Nevada site in fiscal 2013 that begins Oct. 1.
In short, we agree that Yucca’s licensing should be finished. We believe that the debate about Yucca can’t even truly begin unless all parties can equally weigh the merits of Yucca’s safety, or lack thereof, as documented by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its attendant advisory boards. Without the licensing process complete, everything else is just political talk and hand wringing.
The complicated politics of it all is above us simple folks in Nye County. We don’t care how Nevada figures into Obama’s re-election campaign, or what Sen. Harry Reid promised years ago about killing Yucca dead.
All we know is that with Yucca, the potential economic benefits to Nye County glow brighter than an atomized Pacific atoll.
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