Lawmakers urge Energy Dept. to halt Yucca shutdown

Ninety-one lawmakers, mostly Republicans, are urging Energy Secretary Steven Chu to hold off on closing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

Sixty-seven representatives and 24 senators — led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) — argue the department “has overstepped its bounds and has ignored congressional intent without peer review or proper scientific documentation in its actions regarding Yucca Mountain,” according to a letter sent to Chu Tuesday.

They are asking the department to halt the Yucca site’s shuttering until a pending federal lawsuit filed by the states of Washington and South Carolina, among others, has been decided. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on June 29 also denied the department’s move to withdraw the licensing application for the Yucca site. 

This is a “clear statement that the Department does not have the authority under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to unilaterally terminate Yucca Mountain,” the lawmakers wrote.

Murray is one of 12 Democrats who signed on to the letter — most, if not all, share her concern about waste sitting at sites in their states not being shipped to the Yucca repository. This includes Washington’s Hanford nuclear production complex, which has more than 50 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste stored in more than 170 underground tanks. The Hanford plant and Aiken County, S.C., are also suing the department to keep the repository open.

“The primary reason why Sen. Murray is focused on this issue so much for years is that at the Hanford site they’ve been packaging the waste to be shipped to Yucca,” a Murray spokesman said. “The government has spent a lot of money researching this and for many years this has been scientifically recognized as the best site.”

Nevada lawmakers — including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — have for years fought to keep the repository from being built in their state.

Congress approved the site as the nation’s nuclear waste storage site in 1982. But making good on a campaign pledge by President Barack Obama, the Energy Department in February announced it was looking at other options to store waste. This includes more safely storing waste at existing nuclear plants.

Lawmakers would need to find hundreds of millions of dollars to have the department continue its application process for the repository, while Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2011 does not include any money for that purpose.

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