Reduced Yucca budget pending

Ben Grove

Friday, Jan. 17, 2003 | 10 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- As lawmakers near the end of a complex and protracted battle over federal spending, this year's budget for Yucca Mountain is still about $336 million, about $255 million less than President Bush wanted, congressional sources said.

The Senate this week turned to 11 spending bills that set budgets for much of the federal government for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Congress failed to agree on the bills last year and temporarily froze spending at last year's levels in order to keep the government operating.

The bills set budgets for many of the federal government's programs and its agencies -- everything from Yucca Mountain, homeland security and education to farm aid and foreign aid. Lawmakers today were still debating the bills, now wrapped into a single omnibus bill totaling nearly $400 billion.

If Congress approves $336 million for Yucca, it would be lower than budgets in the last two fiscal years: $377 million and $392 million. Each year the budget has been lower than what the Energy Department and President Bush requested from Congress, in large part because Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has reduced the budget in the Appropriations Committee, in efforts to slow the project.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the site approved by the Energy Department and President Bush for a national underground repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste, now piling up at power plants and Department of Defense sites.

Nevada officials oppose the project. The total project cost has been more than $7 billion so far and could top $58 billion. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not approved the project and construction has not begun. It would not open until 2010 at the earliest.