Yucca issue aside, NRC picks cruise through hearing

WASHINGTON — Three Republican nominees to serve on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would oversee a license application for the Yucca Mountain project, sailed through a Senate committee hearing Tuesday, despite questions by Nevada lawmakers.

Lawmakers on the Senate Committee for Environment and Public Works aimed most of their questions at Susan Bodine, the chief counsel of the panel, who has been nominated to serve as assistant administrator of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance of the Environmental Protection Agency.

No questions about Yucca Mountain were posed to Kristine Svinicki, renominated by President Donald Trump to serve as NRC chairwoman. It would be her third term as a commission member.

Also selected to serve on the fivemember commission are Annie Caputo, senior policy adviser of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, and David

Wright, a former chairman of the South Carolina Public Service Commission.

Also on the commission are Jeff Baran, a Democrat, and Stephen Burns, an independent.

Sen. Dean Heller, R-nev., and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-nev., said in a joint statement said that the nominees under consideration for the NRC have a “history and record of strongly supporting moving forward with the Yucca Mountain repository.” The Nevada senators said they wanted to question the nominees at a later date.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-wyo., the committee chairman, said the panel would vote Thursday on the nomination of Svinicki, whose pending nomination before the Senate is necessary to provide a quorum on the NRC after June 30.

Svinicki appeared before Senate Appropriations Committee last week to seek $30 million in fiscal year

2018 to prepare for the restarting of Department of Energy’s licensing application to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The licensing process was stopped in 2010. Trump has asked for $120 million in his budget blueprint to restart the process and explore temporary storage of nuclear waste.

Contact Gary Martin at 202-6627390 or gmartin@reviewjournal.com. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.