Slashed budget threatens Yucca studies

Wednesday, July 21, 1999 | 11:29 a.m.

Both the Department of Energy and the nuclear industry fear cuts proposed by a House budget committee could stop studies for a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

The DOE plans to open a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by 2010, but the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a $281 million budget for civilian and defense nuclear waste storage that is $77 million less than this year's funding.

This year's $358 million budget is 22 percent higher than the proposed funding for 2000.

The committee cited severe budget constraints before its voice vote.

The House budget is $128 million less than the DOE requested. The Senate on June 16 passed a budget of $355 million, which is $74 million more than the House version. The sharp contrast will send both bills to a conference committee.

In February DOE's Acting Director of Civilian Nuclear Waste Storage, Lake Barrett, asked Congress for $51 million more to finish scientific studies to prove whether or not the mountain is safe to store 70,000 tons of highly radioactive waste for thousands of years.

Barrett warned that anything less than the department's $409 million request could delay the opening of the Yucca Mountain repository.

If the proposed budget cut survives a joint House-Senate session, studies that are scrapped or delayed will push the opening of the repository past 2010, Barrett said.

The nuclear power industry said in a letter that it was alarmed over the budget cut and that it could "cause significant delays, if not shut down the project altogether."

Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Unglesbee said that the House proposal could stop studies at the site as well as those in laboratories across the nation.

The House had stripped funding from the Yucca Mountain budget for Nevada's oversight of the project for four years in a row, state Nuclear Waste Project Director Bob Loux said.

Last year when the budget went to conference committee Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., got $250,000 for the state, Loux said.

This year Reid is assured a seat at the House-Senate budget conference because he is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

In addition, the Nevada Legislature approved funds to keep the state office operating for two years on a shoestring budget, Loux said. So if the House budget cut survives, the state office will continue to operate, he said.