Lawmakers tour Yucca nuclear waste site

Six House lawmakers on Thursday took a tour of Nevada’s Yucca Mountain site, which has long been planned as a storage place for the nation’s nuclear waste.

The lawmakers, lead by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), rode through a 5-mile exploratory tunnel that was built in the 1990s, before President Obama stopped the construction project in 2010 amid local opposition, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

{mosads}Representatives from the Energy Department and journalists accompanied the bipartisan delegation.

Shimkus, who chairs the subcommittee with responsibility over nuclear power, organized the tour to promote efforts to restart the project. He said there’s little reason to oppose it and argues it would save millions for the U.S. government.

“It’s 30 years, $15 billion of an investment by the nation,” Shimkus said after the 1-hour 15-minute ride through the tunnel, according to the Review-Journal.

He argued the site would be safe “for a million years.”

“It’s an investment that we need to keep in mind as we move forward,” he added.

The Yucca debate is expected to heat up with the news that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is retiring. Reid has long been the most outspoken opponent of using Yucca as the waste site, but he will leave the Senate after next year. 

Another complication has been the Nevada presidential caucuses. Presidential hopefuls in both parties are under pressure to oppose calling for Yucca to be used as a waste site as they compete in the early nominating contest.

Shimkus took another delegation to the site in 2011. Aside from a Defense Department visit earlier this year, the 2011 trip was the last anyone has taken inside Yucca.

What made this trip different was the bipartisan attendance and the presence of Nevada members of Congress, who have historically opposed the project.

“I learned that there’s a tunnel in the ground. I learned that there’s science behind some of this stuff,” said Rep. Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.), who recently called for Nevadans to engage with proponents of Yucca to come to a possible agreement to build it.

“I’m glad I came. That gives me a little better understanding how this is set up and what the plans are if it is approved,” he said. “I think that’s important.”

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) sent out a statement criticizing the event, which he described as “nothing more than a poorly disguised gimmick.”

Shimkus has named restarting the Yucca process as one of his top priorities this year.