Pared-down Yucca budget set for OK

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, June 25, 2004 | 11:02 a.m.

The House of Representatives was expected to pass a bill today that would give the Energy Department $131 million for work on Yucca Mountain next year, a fraction of what the department requested.

The Energy Department, which has fought for more money, has said cuts to its request of $880 million would mean 1,700 workers in Nevada would be laid off and work on the planned nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas would be slowed.

The House Rules Committee on Thursday night passed provisions that would make changing the budget very difficult. Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Jon Porter, R-Nev., lobbied for the restrictions to stop an attempt by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, to make an amendment to give the project $750 million.

A Barton spokeswoman said the congressman did not plan to offer the amendment today.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who is the chairman of the committee that oversees Yucca Mountain, pledged to continue to work for the repository.

"This is a program that this country has taken a position on," he said on the House floor. "We have to solve this problem. This is where the repository is supposed to go. We've spent a ton of money on it, and it's moving forward."

The Energy Department has said at $131 million for the project, it would have to lay off more than 1,700 Nevada employees and contractors working on the project. The department has also said that with that amount it would not meet its planned 2010 opening date. Nevada wants to stop the project any way it can, but the funding battle is not over yet.

"We continue to face an uphill fight against an administration and Republican leaders in Congress who care more about the profits of the nuclear industry than the do about the lingering scientific uncertainties that surround Yucca Mountain or the threat to the safety of millions of Americans that nuclear waste shipments will create," Berkley said. "Those working to see nuclear waste dumped in Nevada are already vowing to use the conference process to restore any shortfall in the president's record $880 million dollar budget request for Yucca Mountain. This is a daily battle as we move forward on spending bills that fund nuclear waste projects."

The budget will be decided later this year.

The Senate has yet to set a budget for Yucca Mountain and will take up work on the bill after the Fourth of July. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the top Democrat on the Senate committee that sets the energy budget, has regularly cut money from the Yucca Mountain budget.

The budget will be finalized by a conference committee made up of House and Senate members, which will determine the final bill.

Yucca Mountain proponents wanted to change the way Congress funds the project and let the Energy Department take money from the Nuclear Waste Fund, which comes from fees on users of nuclear power. But a House committee rebuffed that attempt, leaving the Energy Department with the lower amount.

As the energy bill neared the House floor, Nevada's three representatives then successfully lobbied the rules committee to prevent a last-minute change, which would have allowed a representative to put an amendment on to the bill for more money for Yucca Mountain.

Gibbons and Porter spoke before the Rules Committee last night. Gibbons said the project does not deserve a blank check, according to spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer. He had sent a letter to committee chairman Rep. David Drier, R-Calif., saying if the committee allowed an amendment that would change the budget rules "we would place not only the budget, but the safety of this nation at risk."

Gibbons wrote: "With every week that goes by and with every dollar spent in an attempt to make the Yucca Mountain waste repository feasible, additional flaws that should render the project unsuitable for licensing are exposed."

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., blocked a similar move in the Senate. Ensign sits on the Senate Budget Committee and did not let the change into the Senate budget resolution passed earlier this year.

Reid and Ensign will continue to fight the proposal and overall funding for the Yucca project.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, is trying to get nuclear ratepayers to pay more this year to make up the funding difference, so he would not have to take money away from other programs in the bill.