May 24, 2016  
Contact: Kyle Roerink
Phone: (202) 657-3219

Today Representative Dina Titus of Nevada’s First Congressional District spoke on the U.S. House floor to address a proposal to fund the failed Yucca Mountain nuclear repository project in the Fiscal 2017 Energy-Water Appropriations bill, H.R. 5055. 
The Republican-backed provision would allot the Department of Energy $150 million to continue an application process to license the project as a nuclear storage facility. The legislation also prohibits any funds from being used to close Yucca Mountain as a future storage option.

Republicans made the same attempt last year but failed to see it become law. This year they continued that charade without considering legislation like Rep. Titus’ Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act which would require projects like Yucca Mountain to receive approval from local governments in affected areas.  

Watch Rep. Titus speak on the floor and see an excerpt of her remarks below.

“Yucca Mountain is not a secure depository that would seal dangerous waste safely for a million years,” Rep. Titus said. “It is instead a proposal based on bad science and faulty assumptions. Specifically, the NRC confirmed that it is not secure, that it will leak, and that radiation will travel miles through underground water sources to farming communities in the Amargosa Valley on its way to Death Valley National Park. But before the radioactive material can leak out of the ground, it first has to be shipped using untested procedures by truck and by rail through nearly every state and every congressional district in the lower 48. These shipments will occur for decades, passing homes, schools, parks, hospitals, churches, and farms. They will pass through the heart of my congressional district along the famed Las Vegas Strip where 42 million people come every year to work and play. We need to stop the Yucca Mountain boondoggle once and for all.”