Republican Trump's past three budgets have called for the
licensing process of Yucca to restart with $116 million proposed
last year in the 2020 budget, and $120 million in each of the
previous years.
On Thursday, however, Trump wrote on Twitter: "Nevada, I hear
you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you!"
The administration is committed to exploring innovative
approaches, he wrote, adding "I'm confident we can get it done."
In addition, a senior administration official said, "The
President’s 2021 budget will not have funding for the licensing
of Yucca Mountain in it."
Yucca Mountain has been pending since Ronald Reagan was
president and the government has spent money on initial
construction and design, despite staunch opposition to the
project from lawmakers in Nevada, who have said that the federal
government has tried to pressure a sparsely-populated state.
Trump's administration has tried to support nuclear power plants
which are suffering from high security costs and competition
from power plants that burn natural gas, which analysts expect
to fall to lowest price in more than 20 years.
Tensions between Nevada lawmakers and Washington over nuclear
waste flared when the administration revealed that the
government secretly shipped to Nevada deadly plutonium from a
South Carolina site that produced it for nuclear bombs during
the Cold War. The shipment occurred sometime before November
2018.
U.S. Representative Dina Titus, a Democrat from Nevada, said on
Twitter: "President Trump tried to shove nuclear waste at Yucca
Mountain down our throats for three years. We beat him badly and
he knows it."
Nuclear waste from electricity generation is currently stored at
nuclear power plants, first at spent fuel pools and then dry
storage casks.
Other sites being considered for the waste are in rural Texas
and New Mexico.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; editing by Grant McCool)
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