House Subcommittee Approves Yucca Mountain Dump and Consolidated Interim Storage Facility Bill
As reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
But not only would the bill speed the opening of the Yucca Mountain dump, targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada. It would also authorize the U.S. Department of Energy taking ownership to commercial irradiated nuclear fuel at consolidated interim storage sites -- as currently targeted at Hispanic areas of New Mexico (Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance) and Texas (Interim Storage Partners, including Waste Control Specialists, Orano of France, and Nuclear Assurance Corporation) in the Permian Basin. This would be a major reversal in decades-long U.S. high-level radioactive waste policy and law. It would create the very high risk of CISFs becoming de facto permanent, surface storage, "parking lot dumps." DOE has itself warned, in its Yucca Environmental Impact Statement, that surface storage, combined with loss of institutional control over a long enough period of time, would result in container failure, and consequent catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity into the environment.
admin
E&E/Greenwire also reported on this story (behind pay wall, but free subscriptions are available).
admin
As reported, U.S. Reps. Shimkus (R-IL) and Walden (R-OR), the Ranking Republicans on the Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee, and the Energy & Commerce Committee, respectively, in the U.S. House, are gleeful about the prospect of opening high-level radioactive waste dumps in Nevada, New Mexico, and/or Texas, if Shimkus's H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, becomes law.