Lawmaker: Trump win brings Yucca Mountain closer to opening
By Bristow Marchant, Tribune News Service
With Donald Trump moving into the White House and former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid heading back to Nevada, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., is optimistic the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository soon could be back on the federal government’s agenda.
The South Carolina Republican told the Columbia Rotary Club on Monday that the president-elect’s transition team has distributed a survey to Energy Department personnel about the long-delayed facility in southern Nevada that could host nuclear waste now held in South Carolina — something Nevada’s Reid, the Senate’s minority leaders, long opposed.
“We’ve already put $1.5 billion into permanent storage there,” Wilson said, adding he hopes the retiring Reid “goes (home) to his just reward in Las Vegas.”