Murkowski presses Obama official on late nuclear waste plan

[COMMENTARY:  This article and Senator Murkowski's statement illustrates further the anti-Nulcear Power position the Barack Obama Administration holds.  While penalizing nuclear plants like San Onofre for their nuclear waste, the administration simultaneously does not release a nuclear waste plan by set deadlines.]

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) pressed an Energy Department (DOE) official Wednesday for answers on why the Obama administration missed a summer deadline for finalizing a nuclear waste storage plan.

“The government’s failure to address our nuclear waste issues is damaging to the development of future nuclear power and simultaneously worsening our nation’s financial situation,” Murkowski said during opening remarks at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “We need to act, and we need to act soon.”

The administration did not meet a scheduled July 31 deadline to complete its nuclear waste storage plan.
Peter Lyons, DOE assistant secretary for nuclear energy, told the Senate committee the administration is uncertain when the plan will be ready.

That plan is supposed to design a way to implement recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, a group formed by President Obama in 2009 to evaluate the nation’s handling of nuclear waste.

“That work does continue and is nearing, I think, a conclusion,” Lyons said. “The matter is very much ongoing.”

When Murkowski asked Lyons to clarify whether a plan would be ready in a month, six months or a year, Lyons said he did not have enough specifics to comment.

The topic of nuclear waste became more highly politicized when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), under former chairman Gregory Jaczko, stopped reviews of the Yucca Mountain disposal site in Nevada.

The NRC said it lacked the money to continue reviewing the site. Republicans, however, charged that shutting Yucca down was a political decision led by the administration and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

A bill discussed at Wednesday’s hearing recalled that dispute.

The bill (S. 3469), introduced by committee chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), largely adopts the Blue Ribbon Commission’s recommendations.

It would encourage moving nuclear waste currently stored at nuclear reactors to consolidated interim sites until Congress approves a long-term repository. It also would open up more potential permanent repository sites for consideration beyond Yucca.

But Murkowski said the bill would prohibit interim storage until the NRC receives a formal application for a permanent site. That could get the process ensnarled in legal and political battles much like Yucca, she said.
Bingaman said such a provision was necessary to ensure interim sites do not become de facto permanent sites.

That contention is what will prevent the bill from going forward this year, Bingaman and Murkowski said, adding they largely agreed on many of the bill’s other provisions.

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