Nevada reps will speak at Yucca status hearing

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2003 | 10:52 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada's three House members will address the status of the Yucca Mountain Project at a House subcommittee hearing Thursday after being initially frozen out of the process.

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and air quality, which had planned the Thursday hearing that was to feature the Energy Department, its contractors and the nuclear power industry, originally was not going to allow Nevada's representatives to speak, but this morning Nevada's delegation was invited to testify.

Aides to Republicans Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter and Democrat Shelley Berkley confirmed the Nevada representatives are set to give statements at the hearing after they asked the committee for permission to speak.

Berkley credited her staff's "relentless" work in contacting the committee to make sure the delegation was included, especially after being refused after first learning of the hearing late last week.

Although she would not go into detail on what her testimony would include, Berkley said she would address everything from a lack of scientific evidence on the safety of moving the materials to the amount of money needed to complete the site, "stressing the cost of this folly."

Berkley said the cost estimates for the project, including all of its aspects, could run as high as $300 billion. "Where is this money going to come from?"

Her testimony will also bring up the fact waste will still need to be stored at the 100 nuclear power plants across the country before being moved to Yucca.

"We will never close a dump site, we will only add a dump site," Berkley said.

The Energy Department project is designed to store 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, despite strong opposition from the state, residents and elected officials.

DOE intends to submit a license application for the project in December 2004 and, if approved, the site could open for the first waste shipments by 2010. Critics hope pending court cases could stop the project.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., and subcommittee Chairman Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, have supported the project in the past and previously held hearings on it as Congress weighed the decision last year. The House and Senate approved the plan allowing DOE to move forward with the project.