Commissioner provides county’s voice at Yucca hearing

Nye County Commissioner Dan Schinhofen traveled to Washington, D.C. for a hearing on Thursday to give the county a voice on the issue of Yucca Mountain.

Schinhofen said county officials believe in “the integrity of the scientific review process for the Yucca Mountain repository,” adding, “We want to see the federal government follow the law.”

Schinhofen was the lone local voice to testify to the Congressional Subcommittee on the Environment and Economy on Yucca Mountain during a hearing titled, “Federal, State, and Local Agreements and Economic Benefits for Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal.”

The hearing comes during the latest effort to revive the project in legislation in the House that would allot the U.S. Department of Energy $150 million to continue an application process to license Yucca Mountain as a nuclear storage facility.

Schinhofen said that there’s “no good alternative” to the licensing process established in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. He also made recommendations to improve it.

“To summarize, we believe the law should be amended to include a package of benefits that should go to the state of Nevada and local communities. This would not be bribe money,” Schinhofen said.

The money would “compensate the state and local communities for the increased responsibility that being the home of a spent nuclear waste repository brings with it,” Schinhofen said.

Schinhofen’s stance was not the same as Nevada’s federal and state representatives.

In her testimony, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., spoke about Nevada’s “major sacrifices” and contributions during the atomic age.

“They told us then we were safe and they are telling us now we are safe,” she said.

Titus said that even if “some” benefit were to accrue in Nevada, the state shouldn’t move forward with Yucca Mountain.

“Well, on behalf of three out of four Nevadans who oppose Yucca Mountain, I’m here to say, we cannot and will not be bought off,” she said.

Titus also spoke of her support for the former Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn veto of the Yucca Mountain site 14 years ago.

“In the years that have followed, billions of dollars have been wasted on this boondoggle and we are still no closer to a solution,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, a Republican from Nevada, said, “No one in Nevada is in favor of a nuclear landfill. Neither am I.”

“Nuclear policy is more than where you are going to put it and walk away,” Amodei said. “If you are going to be responsible, it needs to be comprehensive. Not looking for a payday, not looking for a special treatment. But when you think about things like safety, operations and what’s going on in the state, there are many opportunities for this Congress or the next Congress to go ahead and deal comprehensively.”

Congressman Cresent Hardy, whose Nevada Fourth Congressional District includes Yucca Mountain, expressed concern about the federal government forcing the project on the people of Nevada.

He said while “tens of thousands of metric tons of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel dangerously piling up at the power plants with nowhere to safely put it,” many Nevadans feel that they are being forced by the federal government to store a dangerous material that “they had no role in creating.”

“Both of these facts are shameful failures of the federal government and both need to be addressed now,” Hardy said.

“I will never support a repository in Nevada that isn’t safe and that the people don’t want, period,” Hardy added.

State lawmakers also expressed their opposition.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval said in a letter to the subcommittee that Nevada opposes the project based on scientific, technical and legal merits.

Sandoval suggested the entity focuses on bipartisan efforts in Congress to pursue a long-term sustainable solution for the nation’s nuclear waste through a consent-based process.

“If such a process had been embraced by the Congress when my predecessor, Governor Kenny Guinn, vetoed the selection of Yucca Mountain 14 years ago, we might today be closer to a long-term solution for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel,” Sandoval said.

Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Director Robert Halstead also released a statement following the meeting.

“Decades of study have demonstrated that Yucca Mountain is an unsafe site for geologic disposal, and an unsuitable site for interim storage or reprocessing,” Halstead said. “As Governor Sandoval has clearly and unambiguously articulated, there can be no discussion of benefits of any kind when we are dealing with an unsafe repository site.”

On Tuesday, the state Board of Examiners approved an additional $2.5 million for Nevada to keep fighting against Yucca Mountain, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

The contract with the Virginia legal firm Egan &Associates increases the maximum amount to $7.5 million and extends it through Sept. 30, 2017, according to the report.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its final supplement to the DOE’s environmental impact statement for a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in May, concluding that the Yucca Mountain impacts on groundwater over one million years would be “small.” Nevada state officials called the report “defective” and said that the state is ready to challenge “every conclusion” in the 300-page document before the licensing board.”

Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @DariaSokolova77