WASHINGTON — Amid action in Congress to intensify the fight against Islamic State militants, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid found time Tuesday for an issue closer to home: ensuring that a nuclear waste dump in his home state of Nevada remains mothballed even after the government has spent $15 billion on it.
Reid devoted floor time to confirming two nominees — Jeffery Martin Baran and Stephen G. Burns — to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the nation’s nuclear reactors. That means a Democratic-appointed majority will weigh further steps related to creating a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The confirmations come as Republicans have begun talking about trying to revive the Yucca Mountain project if they retake the Senate in November. Reid vowed that Yucca Mountain, which he has spent years working against and can take almost single-handed credit for derailing, would stay dead.
“Yucca Mountain is all through,” he said. “As long as I’m around, there’s no Yucca Mountain.”
Congress designated Yucca Mountain in 2002 as the one national repository for spent fuel from dozens of power plants around the country over the objections of Reid and the Nevada delegation, but once Reid became majority leader in 2007, he acquired new clout to stop the dump.
