Bipartisan Protest Arises Over Yucca Mountain Shutdown

In late May, the Department of Energy notified Yucca Mountain contractor USA Repository Services that it should only do work related to shutting down the repository or administrating employee benefits. The move has been criticized by Reps. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and Jay Inslee, D-Wash.

Washington was hoping to send high-level radioactive waste from the Hanford nuclear reservation and spent fuel from the Columbia Generating Station to Yucca Mountain beginning in 2019.

Ratepayers in the Northwest have paid $290 million into the Energy Department’s nuclear waste disposal fund. Despite this, Energy Northwest, which operates the Columbia Generating Station, has been building storage canisters to keep fuel on site since 2001.

In 2004, the company filed suit and was awarded $56.9 million in damages from the Energy Department, which was found in breach of contract for failing to accept the spent nuclear fuel as promised. The DOE recently filed a notice of intent to appeal that ruling.

Hastings and Inslee are among those pushing in Congress to bar the administration from cutting the project’s funding. They’ve requested a hearing on the issue before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In particular, they object to the DOE using the 2011 budget proposal as a rationale for instructing its contractor to begin shutdown activities, since the budget proposal has not yet been considered by Congress.

"From reprogramming of funds to beginning the process of contract termination and document shredding, the Department of Energy is moving forward as quickly as possible," they wrote in a letter to committee Chairman Henry Waxman and ranking member Joe Barton, adding that a hearing "would enable Congress to obtain some clarity on the Department of Energy's actions regarding Yucca Mountain and the Blue Ribbon Commission.”

Obama has convened a Blue Ribbon Commission to look at nuclear waste disposal options, but expressly prohibited it from further considering Yucca Mountain as a possible repository.

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