ShareThisEver since President Obama promised to significantly scale back the Yucca Mountain budget this year, the question has been a simple one: Now what?
Sometimes the question comes as a genuine line of inquiry about the future of nuclear waste. At other times it is loaded with incredulity.
Either way, Obama's proposal has caused a phenomenal shift in thinking that would have seemed unbelievable just a few months ago.
Gone are the repeated arguments that federal law requires construction of a nuclear waste storage dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the extended debates over science and safety. Yes, lawsuits seeking to hold the government accountable for its promise to handle the waste are continuing and many Yucca Mountain supporters say they will fight on.
But with Obama saying Yucca Mountain will not be developed on his watch, those long-standing issues seem of less importance.
A Senate energy committee hearing this week on nuclear power offered a window onto the new day that has arrived in Washington. "If Yucca Mountain were taken off-line, what's Plan B?" said Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo.
The way the conversation turned was a public reminder that elections matter. Just a few years ago the Bush administration was trying to bolster Yucca Mountain. Bush championed a nuclear energy resurgence as a means of obtaining carbon-free energy.
But the story line in Washington suddenly changed -- as if a rail yard worker flipped a switch and the train jumped to a new track.
Obama and Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader and a Nevada Democrat, are seen by many as an essentially unstoppable alliance in killing the Yucca Mountain plan.
On paper, many past supporters of Yucca remain strong backers, despite the project's fiscal, political and scientific setbacks.
Yet as one Yucca supporter put it this week, it has been no secret where the Yucca debate is going. Even the utility companies had started decoupling the waste issue from efforts to spur a nuclear renaissance, saying they no longer factored Yucca Mountain into their plans to develop new plants.
Klein said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering extending on-site storage to as much as 120 years.
"Yucca has been an interesting sort of thing to be out there," Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said this month. "Hopefully there's another solution they're focused on that allows us to use the waste in an appropriate way versus putting it in concrete."
What the Obama administration plans to do with the spent fuel in the long term remains an unanswered question.
Will a willing host community be chosen for a centralized waste storage site? Will the nation embark on a mission to recycle the waste as other countries do, even though many scientists believe the technology remains decades from being financially viable?
The nuclear industry and its supporters most want an assurance that nuclear revival remains on track. At stake are billions of dollars in federal support.
Karen Harbert, president and chief executive of the Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, issued a statement saying that "while the Institute supports storing waste at Yucca Mountain as required by law ... the operation of Yucca Mountain is in no way a technical or regulatory prerequisite to the growth of nuclear energy in America."
Obama's administration is convening an industry-supported committee to consider disposal options. Reid and Republican Sen. John Ensign have a similar proposal in a bill before Congress.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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