The Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy John Shimkus (R-Ill.) recently led an exploratory hearing on the Energy Department’s strategy for storing and disposing of used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz testified at the hearing and described the department’s new plan for nuclear storage.
Shimkus said that he, along with hundreds of Democrats and Republicans in the House, would prefer that the department not “start over” with a new plan and instead continue pursuing the Yucca Mountain project.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act provided the department with $15 billion in taxpayer and ratepayer funds to research Yucca Mountain as a safe repository. The administration recently moved to terminate the project and is instead backing a new plan that Moniz said is “consent-based approached” and focuses on interim storage solutions.
Shimkus said he and his colleagues on the committee have spent years exploring Yucca Mountain and the different alternatives.
“A close look confirms our belief that building a repository at Yucca Mountain would still be the fastest, best and most viable solution,” Shimkus wrote in an op-ed in June.
Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) also recently said that Yucca Mountain remains the most promising solution to nuclear waste storage.
“In light of all this work, DOE’s new waste strategy very much represents the administration’s effort to start from scratch as if the Nuclear Waste Policy Act doesn’t exist or at least as if most of it doesn’t exist,” Shimkus said.