Test Site funding secure

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 1998 | 10:25 a.m.

Stability was the word used to describe the Nevada Test Site's funding for this year after President Clinton unveiled the federal budget Monday.

David Marks, chief financial officer for the Department of Energy's Nevada Operations Office, said the only significant change will occur when a $250 million Yucca Mountain Project contract with TRW Inc. is transferred to the DOE's local office.

And that shift doesn't affect either the number of employees or much activity, said Russ Dyer, acting director for the Yucca Mountain Project office.

The DOE is studying Yucca Mountain as the sole site for a national high-level nuclear waste dump.

"It's mostly administrative," Dyer said.

The contract transfer will stop the paper shuffling between Nevada and DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C., Dyer said. Currently, Nevada staff at Yucca Mountain have to send any requests or changes affecting the contract to headquarters for approval.

As for the Nevada Test Site, the total budget is $684 million with a 1999 request for $690 million on the table, Marks said.

The days of 3,000 to 5,000 workers slashed from the Test Site payroll are over, Marks said. Over the past 10 years, the worst years were 1996 and 1997, he said.

Overall the Test Site gained an extra $18 million this year over 1997, most of it from the TRW contract transfer.

DOE Environmental Management Program Director Carl Gertz was happy with a $4 million increase into environmental restoration at the Test Site.

Gertz said the $85 million for the year will allow the DOE to drill four test wells in Oasis Valley and around Beatty to track groundwater leaving the scene of hundreds of underground nuclear tests. The DOE is checking for any radioactive contamination.

During a teleconference with the DOE Nevada office, Energy Secretary Federico Pena defended the Clinton administration's push for permanent, deep geological burial for high-level nuclear waste from reactors and defense activities, despite a lawsuit brought by nuclear utilities.

"Yucca Mountain is progressing under massive heater tests, like no one else in the world is doing," Pena said, showing a block of rock under a blanket of insulation.

A license application for a permanent dump could be sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by 2002, he said.

Pena noted that the DOE has offered affected utilities operating 109 reactors to pay them to keep wastes on site or to reimburse them for storing the wastes.

But the industry rejected all such suggestions, demanding interim storage at the Nevada Test Site, he said.

The House approved a temporary storage bill last April and the Senate followed in December, but differences in the bills sent them to a joint conference committee. The future of interim nuclear waste storage appears dim, since this year's Congress will leave early for election-year campaigning and President Clinton has threatened a veto of any such bill.

Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, both D-Nev., said they have a veto-proof majority in the Senate to uphold it.