Friday, July 18, 2003 | 11:26 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- House budget leaders today agreed to scrap legislation aimed at speeding the nation's nuclear waste to a temporary Nevada waste site by 2007, three years before the proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain could be completed.
At issue is a provision in a $27.1 billion House energy and water spending bill that would launch a $4 million Department of Energy study of establishing an interim, above-ground waste site. The site would allow nuclear power plants to begin shipping their waste to Nevada even with the permanent repository under construction.
The Senate version of the bill does not contain the provision.
The legislation surfaced this month as pro-Yucca lawmakers attempt to advance the nuclear waste project, which for years has been plagued by delays and budget cuts.
Reps. Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons, both Nevada Republicans, negotiated behind the scenes with House GOP leaders to have the provision removed from the broader bill when the final version of the bill is hammered out by House and Senate lawmakers meeting in a conference committee.
Under the planned revision, the $4 million would be used instead to bolster security of nuclear waste storage containers at nuclear plants.
Gibbons and Porter pleaded their case to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that crafted the spending bill.
Hobson has said Yucca Mountain is his top priority among national energy projects.
"It's a great victory for Nevada," Gibbons said.
Porter called it a "huge win." Porter said that just four days ago Hobson was not willing to scrap the interim storage provision.
Gibbons, a possible Senate contender in the 2004 election, denied that GOP leaders were merely doing him a political favor.
"It had no bearing on my political future," Gibbons said.
Meanwhile the House today approved the broader spending bill, which included a $765 million budget for Yucca next year. That would be the biggest annual budget ever for the 20-year-old project.
Gibbons and Porter both voted against the bill.
But the Yucca budget is far from final. The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved a $425 million Yucca budget, and the full Senate could vote to approve the much smaller allocation as early as next week.
That would set up a contentious debate between House and Senate negotiators in a conference committee.
So far the annual haggling over the nuclear waste project budget has followed a familiar pattern, with the House proposing increased funding for Yucca from the previous year, and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., quietly negotiating to slash the budget. Reid, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, is a member of the Appropriations Committee.
Observers say the final Yucca budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is likely to be a compromise somewhere near the amount requested by President Bush -- $591 million.
Pro-Yucca lawmakers today said approving Yucca was a matter of national security because it would centralize the nation's most radioactive waste, now piling up at 103 reactors nationwide, in one underground repository.
Nevada officials have argued that Yucca creates security risks, largely because of waste shipments. Nevada officials also note that some amount of waste will always be stored at nuclear power plants and that Yucca Mountain would create one more terrorist target.
In other debate, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and and Porter introduced an amendment that would have reduced the Yucca budget by $30 million and funneled the money to renewable energy projects.
Hobson, among others, objected.
"This (Yucca) project has been starved for funding every year by the actions of the other body," Hobson said. "Let me tell you, 2010 is a pipe dream at the ($591 million) requested funding level."
Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said nuclear power is "green power" because it produces no greenhouse gases, and urged the House to support speedy completion of Yucca to alleviate a long-standing waste problem that plagues the nuclear industry.
"We cannot cut the Yucca Mountain budget," Wamp said. "I'm sorry to my friends from Nevada -- it's not in the national interest to do that."
The Udall-Porter amendment was not approved.
The proposed House version of the Yucca budget contains several provisions not included in the Senate bill. The provisions include: $70 million for waste transportation planning, including initial work on a Nevada rail spur; and $30 million for Nevada to blunt the social, economic and environmental effects of constructing a national nuclear waste dump in the state.
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