WASHINGTON (AP) – Any effort to revive the long-dormant nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain is doomed to fail because the project lacks support from elected officials in the state, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said Wednesday.
A 30-year fight over where to store the country’s nuclear waste has convinced him that “a consent-based approach is the only way we’re going to get across the finish line,” Moniz said.
A 1980s law that directs Congress to store waste at the planned site 100 miles from Las Vegas “hasn’t worked” and can’t work, Moniz said in a speech at the National Press Club, one of his final public appearances as energy chief.
“You’re not going to get there unless it’s a consent-based approach,” Moniz said. “You have to have local, state and federal people lined up” in favor of the project for it to succeed.
President Barack Obama dropped the Yucca plan early in his tenure under intense pressure from Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who made opposition to Yucca Mountain a central part of his political identity. Reid’s successor in the Senate, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, also opposes Yucca, as do Republican Sen. Dean Heller and Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval.