FILE – In this April 13, 2006, file photo, Pete Vavricka conducts an underground train from the entrance of Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Nevada’s congressional delegation is nearly united decrying President Donald Trump’s request for Congress to allocate $120 million to restart the licensing process for a national nuclear waste dump in the desert outside Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken, File)
PLYMOUTH – A number of state legislators from the Cape and the South Shore have sent a letter to President Trump expressing their support for a federal nuclear repository that could be in line for funding.
The Yucca Mountain site in Nevada would house spent fuel assemblies from across the country, including the Pilgrim station in Plymouth, where more than 3,200 spent fuel rods are being stored.
Trump’s budget would create $120 million to restart the licensing process for the site, which was halted in 2009. There currently is no federal repository for spent nuclear fuel in the United States.
In the letter, State Senator Vinny deMacedo (R-Plymouth), Sen. Julian Cyr (D-Truro) and Reps. Will Crocker (R-Centerville), Tim Whelan (R-Brewster), David Vieira (R-Falmouth), and Sarah Peake (D-Provincetown) expressed support for the funding and the licensing of the Nevada site.
“I want to thank my colleagues for joining me in this bi-partisan effort to remind the federal government of its obligations regarding the spent nuclear fuel that is currently stored here in Plymouth,” said deMacedo, who sent a similar letter to the Trump administration earlier this year.
Without a federal repository, the spent fuel assemblies will remain on-site in Plymouth even after Pilgrim’s closure in 2019.
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