Senator wants full Yucca Mountain funding

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, March 9, 2004 | 10:52 a.m.

WASHINGTON --- Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is working on an amendment that would allow the Yucca Mountain Project to get the full $880 million requested by the Energy Department.

If successful, the measure would undo a deal struck by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., to cap the project's funding in the budget resolution to $577 million, or $303 million less.

The Senate started debate on the budget resolution Monday. It sets spending limits for Congress to follow as it decides to fund programs in appropriations bills that will come later this year.

A Domenici spokesman said the New Mexico senator does not agree with the Ensign deal, so he wants to offer an amendment that would raise the spending cap and use the Nuclear Waste Fund to divert money into the program -- similar to what the Energy Department proposed earlier this year.

"He is finding a way that holds his subcommittee harmless when it comes to funding Yucca Mountain," Domenici's spokesman said. "$750 million would be coming from other programs in the bill."

Nuclear utilities pay about $750 million a year into the Nuclear Waste Fund, an account earmarked to pay for nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Of the Energy Department's $880 million request, $749 million would come from this fund with $131 million coming from the Defense Department or general taxpayer money.

Like all federal programs, the Yucca project competes with others in a spending bill for a limited amount of money. But the Energy Department and the nuclear industry would like to see money go to Yucca without affecting other projects such as national laboratories and water development programs.

"I believe this is the original funding intent of the Nuclear Waste Fund," Yucca Mountain Project Director Margaret Chu said Monday. "It will still need to be appropriated by Congress but not competing with other programs in a tight budget situation."

Since 1995 the program has been funded at $713 million less than the department's request, Chu told the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. The group was considering, and likely to pass as it had before, a resolution supporting the budget and the Yucca project.

Nuclear utilities have been waiting since 1998 for the department to take nuclear waste off their hands as promised. They have paid about $20 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund while trying to find a way to manage spent fuel at their plants. Only about $7 billion has been spent so far from the fund on the project despite the fact the law requires money from the fund to go toward the project.

Domenici sits on the Senate Budget Committee and is the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that controls the Yucca budget. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is the top Democrat on that subcommittee, which helps him cut the budget every year.

Domenici also heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which has oversight on the Yucca project.

Ensign also sits on the budget committee. His spokesman, Jack Finn, said it is clear Domenici is "very upset" by the action Ensign took on the project, but that "when it comes to Yucca Mountain, he has made it very clear that he would not support a budget resolution that has higher funding for it."

It was not clear Monday when or if the amendment would be offered.