Reid planning to block ad funds for free Yucca tours

Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2000 | 10:49 a.m.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he plans to block nuclear waste funds used to advertise tours of Yucca Mountain, the proposed site of a high-level nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Tucked inside the $23 billion Energy and Water Appropriations bill is enough money for the Department of Energy to offer free tours of Yucca, the only site being studied to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, Reid said.

While touring Nevada on a summer recess from Congress, Reid saw an advertisement for upcoming free public tours of the mountain. The DOE has offered such daylong visits since 1989 to allow the public to talk to federal scientists about the project.

Reid called it a federal attempt at lobbying for the project.

"The reason I am so aggravated about this is that they (the DOE) raised the issue of the state misappropriating funds for warning people of the dangers from nuclear waste," Reid said.

In 1995 Congress blocked $5 million from the nuclear waste fund provided to the state for oversight of the project. A General Accounting Office report, done at the request of Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said that the state had used the oversight funds to lobby against the nuclear repository project.

"Turnabout is fair play, isn't it?" Reid asked, while not revealing his strategy to cut the funds.

Reid was behind a move to freeze the Yucca Mountain budget appropriation in the Senate bill to $351 million for fiscal year 2001, which begins Oct. 1.

The senator and Gov. Kenny Guinn also lobbied to restore $2.5 million for the state to conduct scientific studies of Yucca.

However, the DOE has placed strict limits on what the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects can study with the money, planning division administrator Joe Strolin said.

The scientific studies must be limited to ground water movement or chemical reactions of the wastes buried in the rock. The state cannot use the monies for socioeconomic or transportation studies, Strolin said.

"The DOE has spent millions and millions of dollars for these tours," Strolin said.