Reid gets his way on Yucca budget

Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning

Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2001 | 9:49 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Every year congressional lawmakers who want to bury the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada engage in a months-long tussle with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., over the Yucca Mountain budget.

Reid, the influential No. 2 Senate Democrat and Appropriations Committee member, proposes a small budget for the nuclear waste project. Pro-Yucca lawmakers argue for a larger one.

The annual budget scuffle ended Tuesday with surprisingly little negotiating. Key lawmakers and their staffers did not haggle over the details, did not bicker about what budget cuts would mean to the project and did not swap favors over the Yucca plan, Reid and several aides said.

Reid simply proposed a budget he thought other key lawmakers could accept -- $375 million. The amount was a compromise: $100 million more than what Reid proposed in July but $70 million lower than what the Bush administration requested in April.

Key lawmakers Tuesday night agreed to it as part of a larger deal -- and that was that, Reid said.

"There was not a lot of discussion," Reid said. "I picked a number and they went with it."

Yucca Mountain is the proposed site of the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository. The Department of Energy has been studying the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas since 1987 to determine if it is a safe site to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from the nation's 103 active nuclear power plants and government storage areas.

About $7 billion has been spent on the 14-year-old Yucca project. It is expected to cost an estimated $58 billion upon completion.

It was not immediately clear how the $70 million budget cut would slow the project in the coming fiscal year.

The DOE will decide how to proceed with its ongoing Yucca studies depending on how the final budget is worded, DOE Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson said. "Sometimes Congress is very specific in what it wants done," Benson said.

The DOE is preparing to make a recommendation to President Bush about whether it is safe to bury nuclear waste at Yucca.

Scientists are still studying how fast ground water is flowing through the mountain; how much water Yucca's rock contains; whether water inside the mountain will corrode nuclear waste containers; and threats of a volcanic eruption from nearby lava cones.

Nevada lawmakers have been trying to kill the Yucca project for years.

Earlier this year Reid had slashed the Yucca budget to $275 million. The DOE had requested $445 million; the House approved $443 million. Congress last year gave the DOE a $391 million for Yucca projects.

Reid has an important perch as chairman of a panel of House and Senate lawmakers who have been meeting to work out the complicated details of a $24.6 billion appropriations bill that sets a budget for energy and water projects nationwide, including the Yucca project. Controversies arose over use of the Missouri River and giving money to Russia to better protect its nuclear materials from thieving terrorists, but not about Yucca Mountain, Reid said.

The House-Senate panel worked out a final agreement on the energy and water bill in a crowded room in the Capitol Tuesday night. The full House and Senate are expected to approve it soon, and President Bush is expected to sign it.

If Yucca is approved the DOE would need $1 billion a year to license, design and construct the repository, Lake Barrett, acting director of DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said earlier this year.

The DOE has asked Congress for more flexibility in spending a national nuclear waste fund, which has about $11 billion in it. Ratepayers nationwide who use nuclear-generated electricity pay taxes into the fund.

The DOE has suggested removing annual congressional budget caps on the Yucca project, which would allow the DOE more access to the fund to use money as needed. Nevada's lawmakers oppose that.

Nuclear energy officials who support the Yucca plan vowed to continue lobbying for bigger Yucca budgets and for more DOE access to the fund.

Yucca budget cuts by Congress continue to be "problematic and contrary to the national interest," John Kane, vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said in a written statement.

"While the program is significantly under funded, we believe the Department of Energy can make the adjustments necessary to keep the Yucca Mountain program moving forward," Kane said. "We will continue working with Congress to see that the program is properly funded." The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state's Yucca watchdog, has been watching the budget process closely this year, Executive Director Bob Loux said. Final agreement on a $375 million budget didn't surprise him.

"It's pretty much what I expected," Loux said. "We think Senator Reid did a great job."

The state also will receive $2.5 million for technical oversight of DOE's activities at Yucca Mountain and local governments in Nevada will share $6 million for oversight.