Nominee to direct Yucca Mountain faces few questions

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2001 | 10:59 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Senators had few questions today at a nomination hearing for the next likely director of the Yucca Mountain project.

Margaret S. Y. Chu fielded only one tough query from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. He asked for Chu's assessment of a draft congressional audit that contained a critical assessment of the Yucca project. Nevada lawmakers leaked excerpts to the media last week.

Chu said she had not been briefed on the General Accounting Office report, which has not been officially released. Chu said she would respond to the report quickly if the full Senate nominates her to be the next director of the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian and Radioactive Waste Management. The office manages the Yucca project.

"All my knowledge (about the report) comes from the Washington Post," Chu said. "With my 20 years of experience, I am confident I can grasp the essence of the issues and give the (Energy) Secretary my candid advice and then advocate my opinion."

Chu faces a difficult job if confirmed. Scientists have been studying Yucca Mountain since 1982, spent roughly $8 billion and they are still years from obtaining final approvals and constructing the repository.

Budget and technical setbacks have beset the Yucca project, Bingaman stressed. By law the DOE was supposed to begin hauling nuclear waste away from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants for central, permanent storage at the Nevada site by 1998. Nuclear power companies have sued the DOE over the matter.

The GAO draft report, which said the DOE should delay the project because scientific studies are still pending, was the most damning evidence yet that the project has been mismanaged, Nevada lawmakers said. They are plotting new strategies to kill the project.

Chu met with Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., on Tuesday in separate private meetings -- courtesy sessions with the Senate's leading Yucca opponents.

Neither Ensign nor Reid, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, would say if they plan to support her nomination.

Ensign and Reid are still assessing whether Chu has pre-determined biases in favor of the Yucca plan, Ensign said. The senators have requested Chu to submit in writing a more precise answer to whether she supports a fair and objective Yucca review.

Chu, who has a doctorate in physical chemistry, has been director of the Nuclear Waste Management Program Center at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque since 1998. She has worked for Sandia since 1980.

Early in her career Chu helped the Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission develop regulations for underground waste sites, she said.

"We would debate late into the night the issues associated with regulating something for tens of thousands of years, speculating on future generations' behavior," she said. "We understood back then that designing a balance between the needs of this generation and the legacy we leave to those that follow would be the critical question facing future managers of the repository programs."

Chu would replace long-time DOE manager Lake Barrett, who has been acting Yucca chief since January.

Energy Committee member Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said his goal was to confirm Chu this month before Congress adjourns for the year.