House Republicans are pushing a $35 million spending plan to revive Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, but this time not all the state’s congressional delegation is opposed to the plan.
According to the
Las Vegas Sun, GOP Rep. Mark Amodei says he’s ready to work out a compromise to put the project back on track. The House Appropriations Committee, meanwhile, was scheduled to vote late Wednesday on an annual energy and water package that includes funding for Yucca Mountain.
Amodei told the newspaper he “doesn’t know of anybody who thinks we ought to have a nuclear landfill” in the state, a view shared by both Republican and Democratic members of the Nevada delegation for years. But he added, “I think we need to talk about it.”
“This gives us an opportunity to talk about it,” Amodei said of the spending proposal. “Once people get over the, ‘Oh my God, you said [Yucca]’s not dead,’ part, I think the focus goes to, ‘OK, if it’s not dead, what is alive?’”
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already suspended its licensing review of the site, which effectively ended the process of considering it as the nation’s only repository of nuclear waste.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has also made sure Yucca funding has not been included in every annual appropriations bill since President Barack Obama took office.
Both Republican Sen. Dean Heller and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, who are expected to engage in a close Senate race in Nevada, also object to the Yucca Mountain project.
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