State agency studying nuclear waste in limbo

Friday, May 1, 1998 | 10:27 a.m.

The problem, Gov. Bob Miller said Friday, is that the U.S. Department of Energy has frozen $691,000 in federal funds that the Nevada Nuclear Waste Projects Office intended to spend. That leaves the state office with only about $92,000, enough to operate for only two more months.

The Energy Department concluded in an audit that the state agency improperly shared public information with other states about scientific findings at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The federal government charged that Nevada passed information indicating that Yucca Mountain was an unsafe location to dump nuclear waste, and that thousands of shipments of dangerous waste would pass through their communities. Miller, however, took issue with the Energy Department.

"The DOE is playing fast and loose with the word 'improper,"' Miller said. "Our state agency did nothing more that disseminate information that the public has right to know, both in Nevada and in other states. There is absolutely no allegation that the agency misappropriated even a nickel, or that any money is missing or used for personal gain.

"This is merely a part of an ongoing effort to stifle Nevada's ability to oversee the Yucca Mountain project and inform the public."

The state office, established in 1983, had received millions of dollars in federal funding to monitor the Yucca Mountain study. But Congress cut off funding from the office beginning 1996 after a federal audit alleged that the state was improperly spending the money on such items as public relations.

A three-judge panel of the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld Congress' decision to cut off funding but the state has appealed to the full court. The $691,000 that the federal government wants to freeze was actually money left over from the fiscal 1995 allocation to the state.

Bob Loux, executive director of the state agency, said his office has had to suspend contracts with experts who specialize in such areas as hydrology, geology and transportation. He intends in June to ask the state Legislature's Interim Finance Committee for up to $1.8 million in funding to keep his office open for at least another year.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said earlier this month that he wants Congress to pass a bill by the end of May to establish a temporary waste dump at the Nevada Test Site near Yucca Mountain.

Nevada, however, has taken an official stand against the shipment of high-level nuclear waste to this state.