Yucca Mountain
Yucca Mountain, the Nevada-based, scientifically flawed and politically unjust proposed high-level radioactive waste repository has now been canceled. However, pro-nuclear forces in Congress have not abandoned Yucca and funding is still allocated to the project.
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May 26, 2019Funding for Yucca Mountain dump blocked in key U.S. House Appropriations Committee vote
The Yucca dump zombie remains dead -- for now anyway. Political cartoon by Jim Day of the Las Vegas Review Journal in 2010, when the Obama administration wisely cancelled the unsuitable proposal. 1987 marked the year of the Screw Nevada bill in Congress. Be sure to count the toes!Thank you to those in key states with congress members on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, who took action on our alerts earlier this week -- our side managed, by a narrow two-vote margin, to fend off a Republican amendment, attempting to re-insert funding for the controversial, dangerous Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump scheme, targeted at Western Shoshone Indian Nation land in Nevada. (Speaking of which, the National Congress of American Indians, NCAI, weighed in this week against the Yucca dump, a very valuable action!) While this is very good news, we will need to remain vigilant -- Republican U.S. Representatives may try again on the U.S. House floor in the weeks or months ahead, as an amendment on final passage (likely to take place in the first half of June). But there is some bad news -- funding for Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities (CISFs, as currently targeted at New Mexico and Texas -- see related entry about Rose Gardner, above) was retained in the U.S. House Appropriations bill. We will soon see if funding for the Yucca dump, or de facto permanent surface CIS dumps, is included in U.S. Senate energy and water appropriations bill. Please contact your U.S. Rep., and both your U.S. Senators, and urge that they block any funding for the Yucca dump, and for CISFs, at decision making points in the future. (You can be patched through to your congress members' D.C. offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard, at (202) 224-3121.) Learn more at Beyond Nuclear's Yucca Mountain website section.
S.1234 - A bill to establish a new organization to manage nuclear waste, provide a consensual process for siting nuclear waste facilities, ensure adequate funding for managing nuclear waste, and for other purposes
The three sponsors of this bill, currently, are Republicans Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Lamar Alexander (Tennessee), and Democrat Dianne Feinstein (California).
Murkowski is chairman of the U.S. Senate Natural Resources Committee.
Alexander is chairman of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Water Appropriations; Feinstein is the subcommittee's Ranking Democrat.