Valley awaits federal project money

Wednesday, July 19, 2000 | 11:28 a.m.

Money flow

Southern Nevada projects that would receive part of $48 million in a Senate energy and water development budget bill include:

Southern Nevada stands to get $48 million in federal money next year for water and energy projects, including $8.4 million to pay for local and state oversight of the Yucca Mountain Project.

The money is provided in the Senate's Energy and Water Appropriations Bill for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The bill is likely to be voted on by the full Senate next week, a spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.

Then the bill will go to a conference committee to work out differences with the House version of the bill, spokesman David Cherry said.

If the totals survive negotiations, $2.5 million of the oversight funds for Yucca Mountain will go to the state and $5.9 million will be shared by 10 local governments, the senator said in a written statement.

The Department of Energy is studying Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a national repository for high-level nuclear waste. If it is found to be suitable, 77,000 tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants and defense radioactive waste could be shipped to Nevada by 2010.

"Nevadans are overwhelmingly opposed to the construction of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, but the only way to put the brakes on this runaway train is to prove through sound science that the site is flawed," Reid said.

The DOE's budget for the Yucca project was frozen at $351 million, the same amount as this year's funding.

The money designated for oversight will help the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects pick up scientific studies abandoned five years ago when the state's nuclear waste funding was cut by Congress, agency Director Robert Loux said.

"It's going to enable us to do some technical and scientific oversight work we haven't been able to do in a long time," Loux said. The studies include work on nuclear waste canister materials and whether they are compatible with Yucca's complicated soils, rock and ground water.

Nevada mechanical engineering graduate student Alex Kramer is working at the DOE's Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico this summer on a $150,000 grant from the state, conducting experiments on what happens to nuclear casks during a fire. That work may be expanded, Loux said.

Although the state cannot study socioeconomic impacts or transportation -- considered non-scientific by the DOE -- Loux said the funds will help.

Loux credited Gov. Kenny Guinn for helping get the federal money. "The governor went to bat for us, and certainly Senator Reid, but the governor initiated the process," he said.

In addition to the oversight money, the budget gives $5 million to UNLV for studying a method of transforming highly radioactive waste into smaller, less harmful amounts.

The $5 million is part of a $60 million national research program into the process called transmutation, which takes nuclear waste and greatly reduces its harmful radiation in an accelerator.

Another $5 million from the DOE's budget will fund electronic records management at UNLV.

The DOE budget also gives $1 million to Nevada's Cancer Registry, Vital Statistics and Birth Defects Registry for tracking the numbers of cancers.

Reid said the money is needed, because above-ground nuclear weapons experiments were conducted at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, from 1951 to 1963

"In a state with so many residents potentially exposed to radioactive substances during the last 50 years, it is important to get this program running more efficiently," Reid said.

While Reid brought the bulk of attention to the Yucca Mountain money, the majority of money coming to the state in the water and energy budget will go toward flood control.

The Army Corps of Engineers will receive $21.6 million to build flood protection along the Flamingo and Tropicana washes, the sites of major flooding in the valley during a July 8, 1999, storm. The costs will be shared with the Clark County Regional Flood Control District.

The Bureau of Reclamation will continue restoring the Las Vegas Wash and study Lake Mead for water quality problems with $1.5 million.