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Congressman Bob Latta (R-OH) joined a bipartisan congressional delegation, led by Environment and the Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-IL) to the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage site in Nevada.  Other members on the tour were Reps. Jerry McNerney (D-CA), Cresent Hardy (R-NV), Mark Amodei (R-NV) and Dan Newhouse (R-WA).

“It is imperative that our nation’s nuclear waste is finally placed at a permanent storage facility. Yucca Mountain is clearly the best and safest site to do this. The president needs to put politics aside and allow for this long overdue project to move forward,” said Congressman Latta. 

BACKGROUND: Congress originally selected Yucca Mountain as the site for the nation's nuclear waste repository in the 1980s. The Yucca project was nearing the finish line with DOE's submission of a construction license application, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission docketed for review in September 2008 and was scheduled to decide within four years. 

In 2010, despite Congress’ continued bipartisan support for Yucca Mountain, the Obama administration decided to terminate the project, attempting to withdraw DOE’s license application from the NRC’s review. In August 2013, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the NRC must resume its review of DOE’s license application. One of the first steps in restarting the licensing was for NRC to release Volume III of the Safety Evaluation Report. The report, which was finally released in October 2014, concluded that the Department of Energy’s license application meets the long-term nuclear waste repository regulatory and safety requirements, including that Yucca Mountain would remain safe for at least a million years.