Beyond Nuclear - Yucca Mountain

Thanks to Don Hancock of Southwest Research Information Center for alerting us to this news and analysis:

U.S. Rep. Shimkus (R-IL) has brought two amendments to the U.S. House Rules Committee - one similar to H.R. 3053 (the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 2018 -- passed in the U.S. House last May, but not by the U.S. Senate -- which would expedite Yucca dump licensing, expand waste burial limits from 70,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste to 110,000 MT, authorize consolidated interim storage, etc.), and the other to provide $120 million for Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump licensing, and an additional $30 million for consolidated interim storage.

The U.S. House bill includes border wall funding, so it's not clear whether it can pass the U.S. House, but presumably can't pass the U.S. Senate.

So there could be a government shutdown on Friday night, primarily over the Trump border wall.

But these high-level radioactive waste issues may be included (or not) too!

So the Congressional chaos continues. It's not clear when the U.S. House will vote - maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. If the U.S. House passes this bill and its amendments, the U.S. Senate will have to consider it. But the U.S. House might not actually pass any bill.

Update on December 21, 2018 by

admin

Further updates from Don Hancock at SRIC:

The House passed the Continuing Resolution to fund seven government agencies through Feb. 8, 2019 (the same as the Senate). But the bill added Section 141 to fund the Border wall at $5.7 billion and funding for many government agencies involved with 2018 disaster relief.
https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20181217/BILLS-115SAHR695-RCP115-88.pdf

The House did not vote on the Shimkus amendments to add nuclear waste funding for Yucca Mountain and Consolidated Storage.

The Senate comes back into session today at noon eastern. It may vote on the House bill, which presumably doesn't pass because of Democratic opposition to the border wall. It may vote on the House bill, minus the
border wall funding. It may not vote on anything. Of course, many senators and many Reps. have left DC, not expecting to come back until January 2. So whether some do come back to do something over the weekend
or after Christmas is another question. They may just leave some of the government shut down until the new Congress comes in so that Congress has to deal with re-opening a lot of the government, rather than doing
other things that the House Democrats say they want to do. Chaos continues....