by Dana Gentry, Nevada Current
A victory by Donald Trump in November could revive America’s long-shuttered nuclear weapons testing program in Southern Nevada, as well as the stalled effort to bury the nation’s radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
“This is a new ballgame,” former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, chairman of Nevada’s Commission on Nuclear Projects, said during the panel’s meeting Thursday on Project 2025, the policy playbook for the next Republican administration. The 900-page document, widely criticized as an autocratic blueprint, is the work of the Heritage Foundation and a cadre of former Trump administration officials. “We’re not quite sure what might happen if Donald Trump is elected.”
Bryan, a stalwart opponent of burying nuclear waste in Nevada during his time as governor and in the Senate, told the commission that in the past, Trump has come down on both sides of Yucca Mountain.
“He’s been against it before he was for it. So we really just don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s a very critical time for us.”
Congress designated Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste dumping ground in 2002, during Pres. George W. Bush’s first term. In 2009, thanks in large part to the political clout of former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, Pres. Barack Obama’s administration discontinued the licensing process and put a lid on funding for the proposed nuclear repository.
Trump, while president, tried unsuccessfully to revive funding for Yucca. But in 2020, while seeking a second term, Trump told Nevadans in a tweet “I hear you on Yucca Mountain” and said his administration was committed to “exploring innovative solutions.” He did not commit to abandoning the effort.
Nevada is one of a handful of battleground states in the presidential election between Trump and Pres. Joe Biden, who has made no effort during his term to resurrect Yucca Mountain.
Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, simultaneously claiming he knows “nothing” about the document, and that some of its proposals are “abysmal.”
Advisers to Project 2025 include Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and adviser Stephen Miller, while 140 of Trump’s former employees are among the document’s authors, according to a CNN analysis.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Lombardo, who endorsed Trump, said the governor does not support Project 2025’s advocacy for a nuclear waste site and atomic testing in the state.
Nevadans have long been opposed to the effort, according to polls. Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Sam Brown briefly embraced a waste site at Yucca Mountain, but quickly reconsidered.
The state is currently a party in five lawsuits involving aspects of Yucca Mountain, including water rights and the transportation of radioactive waste.
‘The white whale’
Radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear energy plants is currently stored at a variety of sites.
“Providing a plan for the proper disposal of civilian nuclear waste is essential to the promotion of nuclear power in the United States,” says Project 2025.
The document calls for a number of “needed reforms,” including a review of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) permit application for Yucca and the licensing process.
“According to both the scientific community and global experience, deep geologic storage is critical to any plan for the proper disposal of more than 75 years of defense waste and 80,000 tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel,” says Project 2025. “Yucca Mountain remains a viable option for waste management, and DOE should recommit to working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as it reviews DOE’s permit application for a repository.”
The review would “not mean that Yucca Mountain will be completed and operational; it merely presents all the information for the State of Nevada, Congress, the nuclear industry, and the Administration to use as the basis for informed decisions.”
The document notes the DOE, under Biden, “announced $16 million to support local communities in consent-based siting,” calling it a means of delaying “any politically painful decisions about siting a permanent” dump. “The next Administration should use the consent-based-siting process to identify and build temporary or permanent sites…”
Project 2025 says the government is holding $46 billion in utility and ratepayer funds designated for a permanent disposal site, adding “DOE’s violation of its contractual obligation to take the waste has resulted in the payment of approximately $10.1 billion in settlements and judgments to contract holders.”
The document calls for reconstituting the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management “to allow additional industry responsibility for managing waste, market pricing and competition for waste services, and the opportunity for Nevadans to have more partnership involvement with any nuclear facility at Yucca Mountain.”
“We have to worry about it, and we have to take it seriously,” Fred Dilger, executive director of the state’s Office for Nuclear Projects told commission members Thursday. “But it’s not something that is imminent. I’m not going to panic because of the technical obstacles that are going to be in the way.”
Dilger noted the state is aware of the “remaining few pro-Yucca” interests, including the industry-allied Nuclear Energy Institute, which he says still trots out its 25 year-old presentation on the project.
Dilger said even the Department of Energy, which once spearheaded Yucca Mountain, has become weary of NEI efforts to pursue the site.
“It just cannot happen anymore,” he said. ”So please, let the white whale go.”
Rebound for proving ground?
Project 2025 seeks to “restore the nuclear infrastructure” and to “restore readiness to test nuclear weapons at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), formerly the Nevada Test Site, to ensure the ability of the U.S. to respond quickly to asymmetric technology surprises.”
“I find it almost thematic in tone,” state Commission on Nuclear Projects vice-chairperson Michon Mackedon said of Project 2025. “It is very pro-nuclear. It talks about advancing nuclear warheads. It’s kind of specific on what I will call war features for the nuclear scenario.”
The last of 828 underground nuclear weapon tests took place at the Nevada Test Site in 1992 – 30 years after the last of nearly 100 atmospheric tests conducted at the site between 1951 and 1962.
“When these tests were conducted, they were necessary to provide confidence in the performance, safety, and reliability of America’s nuclear weapons stockpile,” National Nuclear Security Administrator Jill Hruby said in February at the Atomic Museum in Las Vegas. “As a result, we currently have no plans to conduct nuclear explosives tests again.”
Today, the NNSS, according to its website, is “a premier national security resource that supports the stewardship of the nation’s nuclear deterrent and other missions.”
Project 2025 notes U.S. defense operations are based on nuclear deterrence. “The next Administration will need to focus on continuing the effort to modernize the nuclear triad while updating our strategy and capabilities to meet the challenges presented by a more threatening nuclear environment.”
Project 2025 calls for rejecting ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1996, and signed but not ratified by China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States. India, North Korea and Pakistan have not signed the treaty. Russia ratified it but later withdrew its ratification.
Project 2025 calls on the next administration to “indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary.”
“I like to joke that Project 2025 should have been labeled Project 1995 because the ideas are all old and out of date as far as nuclear issues,” Dilger told the commission members, adding a retired senior official from NNSS told him “they want nothing to do with full scale underground testing. There is no need for full-scale underground testing. But that knowledge hasn’t made its way inside the beltway, into the think tank world, apparently.”
This is the first in an occasional series of stories on Project 2025 and its potential impact on Nevadans.
