Yucca chief warns of staffing cuts

Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning

Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 | 9:56 a.m.

Acting Yucca Mountain project chief Lake Barrett on Monday again warned that drastic staffing cuts loom at his agency if Congress approves a slashed 2002 budget for the nuclear waste project.

"We basically would have to lay off the entire Yucca Mountain staff," Barrett told the Sun during a meeting in Las Vegas of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent panel that oversees the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain project.

"The budget for 2002 is very uncertain," Barrett said.

About 1,500 employees work on the Yucca Mountain project, a 14-year-old plan to bury the nation's nuclear waste under the desert ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The DOE has studied the site for years but has not formally recommended it as a safe place to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste. Roughly half of the workers are federal DOE employees; the remaining half work for private companies hired by the DOE.

At issue is the Yucca budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The DOE requested $445 million for the project. The House approved about $443 million.

But the Senate, in large part due to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., slashed the Yucca funding to $275 million. That would be the smallest Yucca budget since 1992.

"We would have to completely restructure the program," Barrett said.

Further complicating the DOE's budget plan are 17 lawsuits filed against the government by nuclear utilities. The utilities went to court after the DOE failed to take responsibility for spent nuclear fuel, piling up at 73 sites across the country, Barrett said. If the utilities win, the DOE would have to pay billions, he said.

Vocal Yucca proponent Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, has referenced a report that estimated the $275 million budget would mean about 650 layoffs, which would "basically kill" the project.

A "conference committee" of both House and Senate lawmakers that includes Reid will set the final Yucca budget. Reid said the final number will be a compromise and fall somewhere between $275 million and $445 million. In fact, Reid and Murkowski have negotiated a resolution that would put the Yucca budget back "to an amount closer to the House-passed version."

Congress is trying to finalize its spending bills before the end of the month, which marks the completion of the current fiscal year.

"I'll do my best" to keep the Yucca budget small, said Reid, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate and a member of the Appropriations Committee.

But, Reid warned, "Lake better get his red pen out and figure out where he can make some cuts."