Cuts threaten opening of Yucca, Abraham says

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003 | 11:04 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham today said that budget cuts would cause delays for Yucca Mountain, saying it would be "extremely difficult" to submit a license application as planned next year.

That could delay the opening of the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department has long set 2010 as its target date for opening the site.

Congress and President Bush last year approved Yucca as the best site for a national nuclear waste dump. The next step in the project's development was set for December 2004, when the Energy Department planned to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct the underground repository.

But the project has long been the victim of annual budget cuts, in large part engineered by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who sits on the Appropriations Committee. In the massive federal budget bill for the current fiscal year, passed by Congress earlier this month, Yucca funding was cut from the department's request of $591 million to $460 million.

The $131 million shortfall "has introduced a high risk in our ability to meet a December 2004 license application date," Abraham said today in a written statement submitted at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Later Abraham told reporters that his department could keep Yucca on schedule to open by 2010 -- but only if Congress fully funded each year's budget request.

Abraham today was making his annual trek to Capitol Hill to explain his budget request for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Abraham has requested another $591 million for that year.

The fact that Yucca's construction license could be delayed comes as no surprise to Nevada lawmakers, who have watched -- and in part, played a role in -- delays during the project's 20-year history. Reid will continue to try to slash Yucca funding, Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said today.

Energy Department officials have been looking for ways to short-circuit Reid's budget-cutting. One proposal, to take Yucca "off-budget" -- giving the department more access to a national nuclear waste fund controlled by congressional appropriators -- has not been well received by lawmakers.

Now Abraham is planning to unveil another approach. Today he said he would soon submit to Congress a proposal that would allow pro-Yucca lawmakers to restore any Yucca budget cuts -- without looking for cuts in other energy projects. As it stands, if lawmakers increase one project budget they have to find "offset" cuts in another. Abraham wants pro-Yucca lawmakers to have more freedom to restore Reid's cuts.

It's not clear if Congress would embrace the proposal. Pro-Yucca lawmakers such as Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, likely would, and he expressed support for it at today's hearing.

But Energy panel chairman Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., among others, has not generally supported such plans. Domenici asked Abraham to get him the exact language of the proposal as soon as possible.

Abraham said he would get the proposal to Congress as soon as it was finalized.

"We are trying to find a mechanism that is one that the budget committee members can support," Abraham said.

Reid also would fight the proposal, Hafen said.

"It would set a precedent that most lawmakers would not want to go along with," Hafen said.

In related action today, the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, a group of nuclear utility companies and state utility commissioners was scheduled to call on Congress to give the Energy Department the money it needs to open Yucca by 2010.

"A failure to meet the current federal schedule not only escalates program costs by approximately $500 million each year, but it will also expose the DOE to further litigation based upon failure to fulfill its legal responsibilities," to open a national waste repository, the coalition said in a statement.