Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

$880 million requested for Yucca

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has asked Congress for $880 million for Yucca Mountain in the 2005 budget, marking the largest amount it has requested in its plan to store nuclear waste in Nevada.

The amount is $303 million more than Congress approved for the project this year, according to budget documents, issued this morning, which say that "substantial resources will be needed to complete the application process and construct the repository."

The department plans to submit its license application for the repository, which would store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year.

The budget summary contained no mention of Nevada's pending legal challenges argued in federal appeals court on Jan. 14, which could stop or delay the project. The budget included a photo of one of the tunnels inside the mountain with the caption "Due to open in 2010."

Each year, as it does for almost all federal programs, the administration proposes a budget for Yucca and then the House and Senate fit it in among the other programs in the annual energy and water spending bill. The bill is subject to a limit that it cannot exceed. The system pits programs against each other for funding.

The project received $580 million for work this fiscal year, the largest amount approved since its inception in 1982. The Energy Department had asked for $591 million.

In the House, Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Jon Porter, R-Nev., continue to talk with their colleagues about the problems with the program and are calling for decreases in funding. All three voted against the final version of the energy and water spending bill last year.

"As we have every year, the members of Nevada's congressional delegation will work to slash this bloated request and to use the budget process to draw attention to the fatal flaws in Yucca's design and the terrorist risks that accompany shipping nuclear waste," Berkley said. "Given the record deficit faced by our nation, I can think of no better place to trim fat from the budget than by eliminating hundreds of millions of dollars from the Yucca Mountain budget."

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations subcommittee that writes the bill that funds Yucca Mountain each year, said he will fight to negotiate the number down. Last year, the House approved more than the request, voting for $765 million. The Senate approved $425 million, and a $580 million compromise was reached.

"DOE's only interest is jamming the project through, and I intend to force them to prioritize their work on safety studies and science first by restricting the amount of money they have," Reid said today. "The more DOE is forced to do the science and safety work, the more we see they are incapable of passing either requirement."

Reid said a high amount requested for Yucca Mountain can "upset a lot of members, not just the Nevada folks," because it will affect other requests in the bill, including national laboratory funding and renewable energy programs.

"I think it's pretty clear that it's a terrible waste of resources," Reid said. "How can they spend a half-billion dollars a year? They can't, reasonably."

Reid's committee only gets a certain amount of money to spend on energy and water projects. Last year the committee's bill included $27 billion worth of projects. Reid questioned the amount of the spending when other programs needed to be funded in the same bill, including flood control projects, making sure nuclear weapons are up-to-date and completing radioactive waste contamination at sites around the country, including the Nevada Test Site.

"I don't know how they can justify this but it's the big utilities that are determining what is going on." Reid said.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee that approves the Defense Department's portion of the budget. Because some defense waste will be stored at Yucca, the Defense Department pays into the Yucca Mountain budget, and he said he would work to cut the funding the project gets.

"At a time when budget deficits are an urgent concern and there are funding demands for the war in Iraq and homeland security that must be met, it is unacceptable to see a 43 percent increase for the funding of the Yucca Mountain Project," Ensign said.

Of the $580 million for this fiscal year, lawmakers authorized $392.5 million of defense money to toward the project, a $38 million decrease from the administration's request. The remaining dollars come from the Nuclear Waste Fund, an account created in 1983 that collects fees from nuclear ratepayers to help pay for the project.

But also in the budget summary, the administration requests a legislative proposal that uses utility company contributions to create a new funds "to ensure that adequate funds are available for the repository to being accepting waste in 2010."

Right now, nuclear ratepayers put about $725 million a year into the Nuclear Waste Fund. They have paid about $18 billion into the fund since its creation in 1983 but close to $12 billion still sits in the account waiting to be spent on the project.

The industry and the administration have tried unsuccessfully in the past to change how the project receives money. A pending House bill would also alter its funding, securing the $725 million for the project each year and then allowing Congress to allocate money beyond that amount.

"Budget oversight is the only way to hold DOE to any kind of accountability," Reid said. He pledged to work to prevent changes in how the project is funded. A Reid aide has said such ideas are not well-received in Congress since none of the appropriators, whether for the project or not, wants to give up any control over the spending process.

The budget summary also says the department is working on ways to monitor "this major construction endeavor," including clearer cost estimates and schedules and regular reports to Congress.

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