Lawmakers are reviving a zombie of a plan: storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, a long-contested site in Nevada about 100 miles from Las Vegas. “Opposition has inhibited congressional appropriations and driven the executive branch to dismantle what has otherwise been a technically successful program,” House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said during a hearing Wednesday. Discussion of Yucca Mountain as a permanent resting place for the nation’s 85,000 metric tons of nuclear waste (and counting) has lain dormant for years after local opposition and congressional gridlock effectively killed the plan, writes Nico Portuondo. But as Republican and Democratic lawmakers find common ground around nuclear power as a way to combat climate change, the old problem of where to put the spent fuel is rearing its head. Lawmakers have already allocated $2.7 billion to enrich uranium domestically. And a bill to jump-start next-generation reactors passed the House with bipartisan support earlier this year. At the moment, nuclear power plants store their radioactive refuse on-site, near reactors, at more than 100 locations across the country. The Biden administration has proposed finding interim storage sites that could serve as a backstop while Congress works to restart Yucca Mountain or finds another long-term site, a process that could take decades. But even some Democratic lawmakers expressed doubt about the viability of interim storage sites without first securing a permanent repository. Plus, two states, Texas and New Mexico, have already outlawed the designation of such sites in their jurisdictions. While Yucca Mountain remains the federal government’s official plan, Nevadans — whose state is a key presidential battleground — are dead set against it. “The bottom line is this: Nevada does not produce nuclear waste, we have not consented to storing it in our backyard, and we should not have it forced upon us,” said Nevada Democratic Rep. Dina Titus. Nuclear power may be a carbon-free alternative to burning fossil fuels, but it turns out no one is really excited to store its radioactive byproduct.
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