This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 31, 2011 - WASHINGTON - Citing "red flags" over possible irregularities and political motivations, a House panel chaired by U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, launched an investigation Thursday of the administration's decision to terminate the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
"The tragic events unfolding in Japan underscore the urgent need for the United States to pursue a coherent nuclear policy to safely and permanently store spent nuclear fuel. The administration's move to shutter Yucca raises serious red flags," said Shimkus in a joint statement with Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Shimkus chairs the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy.
In a four-page lettersent Thursday to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a shorter letter to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko, the two Republicans demanded documents and information related to the decision to terminate the controversial Yucca nuclear repository starting in 2009.
As the Beacon reported this week, the Yucca site was scuttled after encountering sharp criticism from environmental groups and from Nevada lawmakers led by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who proclaimed last fall that Yucca was dead. The administration of President Barack Obama, who opposed the site during his presidential campaign, moved to terminate the Yucca plan two years ago, having the Energy Department withdraw its application for a construction license.
Shimkus and Upton said they decided to launch the inquiry "after reviewing available evidence indicating there was no scientific or technical basis for withdrawing the application." While previous reports had indicated that the federal government had spent about $10 billion on the Yucca project since it was first proposed as a repository, the Republicans said the Government Accountability Office has estimated that the total was more than $14 billion since 1983, of which $9.5 billion "has been directly collected from the public's electric bills."
"Despite the scientific community's seal of approval, extensive bipartisan collaboration, as well as nearly three decades and billions of taxpayer dollars spent, this administration has recklessly sought to pull the plug on the Yucca repository without even the sensibility of offering a viable alternative," Shimkus and Upton said.
While some scientists support the Yucca repository, others have warned that the site is too close to seismic fault lines. Environmentalists contend that shipping the 60,000 metric tons of nuclear waste from power plants around the country to Yucca would have been a dangerous, expensive and lengthy process. Reid and other Nevada politicians also complain that Yucca is only 90 miles from Las Vegas, a tourist mecca.
Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, described the Yucca option as flawed in congressional testimony, and has said the administration wants to study other options to store nuclear waste. Last year, Obama named a blue-ribbon commission to study the waste-storage problem. But several states have sued over the Yucca actions by the Energy Department, which by law is responsible for disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high level waste at 121 sites in 39 states.
In the wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan, Shimkus and Upton contend that the United States must move soon to find a long-term solution to storing its nuclear waste. "Yucca Mountain must be featured prominently in our nuclear future; the stakes are too high for politics to interfere with the permanent and safe storage of spent nuclear fuel," they said.