Editorial: Funding for Yucca in question

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 | 9:12 a.m.

An influential senator who supports the Yucca Mountain project hopes to break a deadlock in Congress over funding a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is seeking a one-year, 60 percent increase in the federal fees that already are imposed on nuclear power customers to help pay for the multibillion-dollar Yucca Mountain project. Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., are working together to stop Domenici's plan in the Senate so that it can't considered by the House, which is much more hospitable to building a nuclear waste dump. But if Domenici is successful, The Wall Street Journal reported this week, $446 million could be raised under his plan, something that should alarm Nevadans because it would place the Energy Department just that much closer to building the dump.

The Bush White House would love to speed up the process in which it hopes to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Nevada, and the administration's Republican supporters in Congress may be all too happy to oblige the administration with any plan that solidifies funding for Yucca Mountain. For that matter, the nuclear dump's supporters want to get the project's application approved by federal regulators as quickly as possible before it's too late -- more information keeps accumulating as to why it's improbable that the site could safely contain the radioactive waste. In addition, the dump's backers don't want questions to keep mounting, and public opposition to swell, regarding the dangers of shipping man's deadliest waste cross-country by rail and by highway; transporting nuclear waste almost certainly would result in an accident and the shipment s would be a target for a terrorist attack.

It does seem odd, with Nevada a toss-up state in what looks to be a razor-close presidential election this year, that Republicans would once again seek to alienate this state's voters. The first time, of course, was two years ago when President Bush persuaded Congress to approve his plan to send nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. In doing so, Bush broke his 2000 campaign pledge that he would use science, not politics, to decide Yucca Mountain's fate. But Bush never really has shown that he cares about the concerns Nevadans have regarding Yucca Mountain. That helps explain in part why John Kerry, who has kept his word and consistently opposed the Yucca Mountain project, is gaining traction in Nevada.