They did. Obama just nullified the work they did. From wikipedia's Yucca Mtn entries:
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The Yucca Mountain Development Act was passed by the Congress and signed by the President in 2002 making development of Yucca Mountain the Law.
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In 2009 the Obama Administration stated that the site was no longer an option and proposed to eliminate all funding in the 2009 United States Federal Budget, prompting inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On March 5, 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a Senate hearing "the Yucca Mountain site was no longer viewed as an option for storing reactor waste,"[1] in contradiction to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, amended in 1987, which designated Yucca Mountain as the national repository for high level nuclear waste. In July 2009 the United States House of Representatives voted 388 to 30 to not defund the Yucca Mountain repository in the fiscal year 2010 budget.
[ Seems to be weak support for this in Congress. ]
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The Department of Energy was to begin accepting spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain Repository by January 31, 1998 but has yet to do so because of a series of delays due to legal challenges, concerns over how to transport nuclear waste to the facility, and political pressures resulting in underfunding of the construction.
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On July 23, 2002, President George W. Bush signed House Joint Resolution 87,[8] (Pub.L. 107-200) allowing the DOE to take the next step in establishing a safe repository in which to store the country's nuclear waste. On July 18, 2006 the DOE proposed March 31, 2017 as the date to open the facility and begin accepting waste based on full funding. On September 8, 2006 Ward (Edward) Sproat, a nuclear industry executive formerly of PECO energy in Pennsylvania, was nominated by President Bush to lead the Yucca Mountain Project. Following the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections, Democratic Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a long time opponent of the repository, became the Senate Majority Leader, putting him in a position to greatly affect the future of the project. Reid has said that he would continue to work to block completion of the project, and is quoted as having said: "Yucca Mountain is dead. It'll never happen."[9]"
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