DOE earmarks $23 million to study nuke transportation

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2004 | 11:12 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department plans to spend $23 million to study how to move nuclear waste through Nevada, but it also made clear Monday that finishing the license application for the Yucca Mountain repository by the end of the year will be its first priority.

Of the department's record-breaking $880 million request for the nuclear waste storage site planned for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, $186 million is to be spent on the transportation component. The department needs to figure out how to move the 77,000 tons of spent fuel destined for Nevada from the 39 states where most of it now sits.

If it receives its full-funding request, the department will add $23 million for transportation planning in Nevada with $163 million for a national program, projects director Margaret Chu said at a budget briefing Monday. Only $69 million was allocated for transportation in 2004.

Chu said the new budget request is to cover a "critical year" for the project since it will integrate the mountain's readiness to take waste, the transportation plan and the plan to have the repository take waste by 2010.

"The (funding) increase has been well understood for many years and it has been carefully planned," Chu said.

But Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., called the request "irresponsible and premature" since the federal court still has not ruled on Nevada's legal challenges against the project. And Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said he would not support wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on the Yucca Mountain project.

A major part of the transportation money is to be used to award contracts for transportation casks and rail infrastructure, Chu said. Other dollars are to go toward completing the environmental studies on a new Nevada rail line and finding ways to include local governments in on the planning.

But none of that will move forward until the license application is done.

Fiscal year 2004 ends Sept. 30, so the department's goal of finishing and submitting its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by December will come in the first three months of fiscal year 2005.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Chu and other department officials said they had no doubts Monday that the department will meet the December deadline but emphasized that it needs the money to do it.

"I've told all the stakeholders that we fund the license application first and nobody gets another dollar until that's fully funded," said Energy Department Undersecretary Robert Card. "So we don't need all $880 (million) for three months worth of work to get the license application in obviously, but those will be the first dollars that we spend."

Card said the $880 million request will fully fund the program to keep it on track for the 2010 deadline but any reduction will not hurt the license application.

"So when that budget is cut the important things are the ones very interesting to stakeholders -- the transportation system, the additional science on the repository -- those are the first things cut, not because we're mean but we've made it very clear from the get-go that there is no sense in us doing more science or transportation if there is no repository," Card said.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said this idea is exactly what she and the delegation have been fighting about for years.

"Does it make any sense to anyone that they would stop the science before moving forward?" Berkley said. "It's not meanness; it is insanity. If he is so hell-bent on the project, let him put it in the president's state or his, not mine. Let him put it 90 miles from where his children live not 90 miles from where my children live."

Meanwhile, Chu said the department called for $9.5 million to go to Nevada -- $7 million for the counties and local government and $2.5 million for the state for its oversight responsibilities and about $11 million in Payment Equal to Tax funds. Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson said the funds pay for businesses' taxes that would have gone to the state and property taxes that go to Nye and Clark County.

The specific Nevada figures could not be located in budget documents released Monday, but officials said the money has been requested. Documents showed a $21 million request for external oversight and PETT funds, a $10 million increase from 2004.

Chu acknowledged that the department did not request any funds in 2004 but did not say why it had decided to include the oversight funds again this year.

Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval threatened more legal action against the administration if it did not restore funding for the state's oversight. Congress eventually approved $1 million for the state and $4 million to be split among county and local governments for 2004.

The department split its $880 million request with $749 million from the account nuclear utilities pay into to support the project and $131 million from the Defense Department.

Chu said the department will send a proposal to Congress that would secure $749 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund that could only be used to fund the Yucca project and nothing else from this point forward. So any cuts to the department's request would not benefit other programs in the Energy and Water spending bill.

Card stressed it would all still be subject to the appropriations process, and not constrain Congress at all in allocating money to the project.