Embattled nuke office stays alive

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 1998 | 11:17 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The state Nuclear Waste Project Office, which has battled against locating a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, has received enough money to stay alive until May.

However, it won't be able to put up much of a fight with its sparse allocation.

The Legislative Interim Finance Committee on Monday approved an emergency appropriation of $228,000 to pay a skeleton staff, but it denied $150,000 to follow up on a study that suggests hot water deep underground could well up and corrode canisters of nuclear waste buried at the site.

Office Director Robert Loux sought $600,000 to keep the agency in existence until June 30. Half of that would be for research projects. Gov. Bob Miller sent a letter in support, saying Nevada is at "crucial junction in the fight to keep Yucca Mountain centered on science, rather than on the politics of high-level nuclear waste.

"Nevada must have the ability to perform scientific analysis of the data presented by the Department of Energy," the governor said.

Mary Lee Dazey of Citizen Alert added her support. Unless the projects office is able to thoroughly review the federal reports, she said, "The state is in serious jeopardy of losing the fight against the prevention of a high-level nuclear waste repository. ..."

Dazey, representing 13 environmental groups and companies, said it's been the state office that has raised the most serious questions to date about the suitability of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste site.

But Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, complained that the office has "been nothing but a propaganda machine for Sen. (Dick) Bryan and Miller for the last 12 years." Nevadans have suffered, he said, because it did not gather scientific evidence.

The office, Neal said, awarded its contracts "to everybody who was opposed to the waste. The public loses because there is no balanced view."

Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas and Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, unsuccessfully pushed for the committee to give an extra $150,000 that could be used to hire Russian scientist Yuri Dublyansky, whose research found tiny bubbles of gases and water trapped in the crystals of the rock at Yucca Mountain. The bubbles indicate that hot water welled up into the soils at Yucca Mountain at a time more recently than first believed.

That finding could cast a serious doubt on the suitability of Yucca Mountain as a repository.

The state, Coffin said, must follow through in gathering more data to disqualify the site. Giunchigliani said it would be a case of neglect if the state didn't try to validate the Dublyansky study.

But Hal Rogers, co-chairman of the Nuclear Waste Study Committee that has been critical of the state, said the Department of Energy has already authorized an independent study by UNLV of the Dublyansky report. He opposed any state money to do an evaluation, saying UNLV and the DOE, working together, "have the capability to do it."

The university is writing a proposal on how to date the minute amounts of fluids and gases Dublyansky discovered in the minerals, accordin to Donald Baepler, director of UNLV's Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies.

"There is a very serious question from the scientific community on whether the material can be dated," Baepler said. The Department of Energy plans to fund the study once the university submits a detailed plan. "It won't be a secret study; everybody will know what is found," he said.

Loux said UNLV estimates the study would cost $400,000, and the Energy Department wants to spend only $50,000. He doesn't think the research will get off the ground.

Loux told the committee that Congress has allocated $250,000 for research. But he said that will be used to hire contractors to examine the viability report and the draft environmental impact statement, which are being released in the next few months by the DOE.

Until 1995, the state office was supported by federal funds, but the government started withholding money and an audit found that about $700,000 had been misspent by the agency. As a result, it froze the last $691,000 in federal funds allocated to the state office.

This fiscal year, the interim finance committee has allocated $615,000 to keep the office open but without any money for contracts to do the evaluations on the federal documents.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, said the committee "has tried to keep the office viable." But he said the problem was caused by Loux's agency, not the committee.

Loux said the audit was asked for by a congressman as a "political tool" against the agency. He said the issue is in court whether the government can withhold that money.

He agreed with Raggio that it was the federal government's responsibility to finance the agency to prepare Nevada's case against the repository. But without federal money, the state should step in, he said.

Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, said, "I don't think the state should be funding research." He said there was federal and grant money available for that job. He suggested the 1999 Legislature would be in session in February and Loux could return then to plead his case for research money. And he suggested the Legislature could commission an agency such as the Desert Research Institute to do the evaluations of DOE documents.

Asked about the possibility of getting more federal money, Loux said he didn't want to predict the future. But he said the chances are better now that Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been named Democratic whip.

The governor, in his letter to the committee, said he met with Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who "expressed his desire to reinstate federal funding to Nevada for oversight study work. However, until such time as the federal government sees fit to provide that funding, it is imperative we make it possible for the work of the agency to continue. We cannot stand still at such a critical time in the life of this project."

Raggio said that any money that comes from the federal government should go to reimburse the state what it has spent so far.