Steve Tetreault reports that a proposal that surfaced in Congress this week aims to spur a revival of the Yucca Mountain project, providing necessary land and water rights to build out the site if federal officials find that nuclear waste can be buried safely inside. No member of Congress yet has stepped forward to take authorship of the proposal. A one-page summary of key provisions was reported Tuesday by Environment &Energy Publishing and later confirmed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Sources said limited copies of the legislation itself have been shared on Capitol Hill and at the Department of Energy. Plans for House hearings were tentatively eyed for next week but have been postponed until later this summer.
The provisions appear to track the goals of House Republicans who have insisted that Yucca Mountain be a part of the mix as Congress sets a new strategy to manage the growing inventory of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel accumulating at commercial power plants.
The site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas once was the centerpiece of the government nuclear waste strategy until it was mothballed in 2010 by President Barack Obama. Before the project was shelved, supporters envisioned storing thousands of canisters of waste in tunnels drilled throughout the mountain and construction of an extensive industrial complex above ground where nuclear waste could be received, repackaged and set on storage pads to await burial.
For Congress now, the goal is to relocate thousands of tons of waste that the government is paying utilities millions of dollars to keep on site in pools and in hardened above-ground containers.
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