Slim Yucca budget set to advance

Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning

Thursday, July 19, 2001 | 10:52 a.m.

The U.S. Senate today was expected to approve a bill that contains the smallest budget since 1992 for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Pro-Yucca lawmakers led by Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the budget was so small it would "basically kill" the project.

Yucca budget wrangling continued Wednesday as Murkowski had sharp words for Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's efforts to strip $175 million in project money out of the annual budget.

"If we reduce the funding, we're putting (Yucca) off indefinitely," Murkowski said in a floor speech.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site under study by the DOE as the suggested burial ground for the nation's high-level nuclear waste. It is scheduled to open as early as 2010, but budget restrictions threaten the project timetable, lawmakers say.

Nevada leaders strongly oppose the Yucca plan. Reid last week slashed Yucca funding to $275 million from $445 requested by the Energy Department, which manages the project. Reid wields some influence over the Yucca budget as the No. 2 Senate Democrat and a member of the Appropriations Committee.

A DOE report Murkowski referenced Wednesday said that Reid's cuts could mean 650 layoffs on the 1,500-person Yucca work force, both in Nevada and Washington.

The DOE's preliminary analysis said Reid's cuts would mean:

* The 2010 target opening date would be "unachievable."

* That 75 percent of federal oversight staff would be cut.

* There would be cuts for independent technical reviews.

The cuts also would hinder the DOE's efforts to finish a surface design for the Yucca site, eliminate university involvement, cut computer support to federal staff and cut "all quality assurance oversight," according to the analysis.

The cuts would come at a critical time. The DOE is wrapping up studies of the mountain and is planning to make a recommendation later this year to the president about whether it is a safe site for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste.

The Yucca budget is wrapped in a $25.4 billion bill for energy and water projects for the nation, which the Senate was deliberating again today. Reid hoped to pass the bill today, aides said.

That would set up a showdown with the House, which approved $443 million for Yucca. House and Senate negotiators would have to work out a compromise.

To be sure, negotiators will work out a Yucca budget larger than Reid's, Reid spokesman Nathan Naylor said. But the number still gives Reid room to negotiate for a much smaller budget than the DOE requested.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., in an interview Wednesday also said he was optimistic lawmakers negotiating behind closed doors in the conference committee would keep Yucca funding low.

Each year, Congress sets a budget for the project, spending roughly $8 billion in the last 20 years.

To pay for Yucca, lawmakers mostly rely on cash in a national nuclear waste fund, fed by utility ratepayers nationwide who use nuclear-generated electricity and pay a special tax into the fund.

The fund now has about $9 billion. By law, 90 percent of overall Yucca costs -- expected to soar to at least $58 billion -- are to be paid from the nuclear waste fund.

The other 10 percent comes from the Defense Department's nuclear waste account because Yucca would store defense waste as well as commercial reactor waste. This year is an anomaly in that Defense Department money -- taxpayer money -- is slated to pay for $250 million of the $275 million budgeted.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are still mulling a bill that would eliminate the authority of Congress to set an annual budget for Yucca. The legislation would give DOE unrestricted access to the federal Yucca fund.

Pro-Yucca lawmakers in the House have said they are weary of haggling over Yucca budgets each year and have introduced legislation that would take Congress out of Yucca budget setting. The proposal, touted by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, is part of a larger bill that outlines energy program initiatives that Barton's Energy Committee was expected to pass today.

Nevada lawmakers are working behind the scenes to kill the proposal, appealing to other key congressmen to retain the budget-setting authority. The proposal has not been approved by the full House or Senate.