GOP senator pushes for more nuclear power, Yucca waste site

By Timothy Cama (The Hill)

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said on Thursday that he’ll use the Energy Appropriations panel to encourage new nuclear power plants and construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, among other nuclear priorities.

Alexander, who is now chairman of the Appropriations Committee panel with power over the Energy Department’s budget, outlined a series of steps that he believes could boost the country’s nuclear industry, stop plant closures and spur new development.

“Our Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which I chair, will take a year-long look at all of this during 2015,” Alexander said in a speech at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s main lobbying group.

“Our committee will begin with oversight, expanded budget hearings in February and March. And then in April, we’ll turn toward a series of hearings about the future of nuclear power in our country and what it would be like for the United States to be without it.”

Alexander in 2009 called for the United States to build 100 new nuclear reactors, a plan even the industry thought might be too ambitious.

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