Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Blog Post: House Committee Investigates Yucca Mountain Closure

Blog Post: House Committee Investigates Yucca Mountain Closure

While the House of Representatives is embroiled in a dispute over the 2011 budget, the Energy and Commerce Committee also is investigating a controversial budget move made two years ago – the abandonment of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Late last week, committee chairman Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., mailed letters to the heads of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy demanding records related to the decision to end the project.

The representatives said in a release that they initiated the investigation “after reviewing available evidence indicating there was no scientific or technical basis for withdrawing [Yucca Mountain’s license] application.”

For decades, the site beside a former testing ground for atomic weapons was to be the nation’s designated repository for high-level nuclear waste. Customers of utilities that use nuclear reactors paid a surcharge for the repository’s construction, but the 2010 federal budget cut off funding to the project and President Barack Obama has long voiced his opposition to it. A number of utilities have sued to recover the cost of dry storage for spent fuel at reactor sites after the 1998 deadline for the repository’s completion passed, and additional litigation soon followed the decision to abandon the project.

The committee’s investigation follows a letter last summer from 91 House members asking DOE to stop work on decommissioning the site. The latest investigation asked the NRC and DOE for a response by next Thursday.
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