Yucca budget may have to wait

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, Oct. 1, 2004 | 9:40 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A final Yucca Mountain project budget number will most likely not be known until after Election Day.

Congress will go home next week, after the start of a new fiscal year, and has left some government agencies operating at 2004 levels until Nov. 20. Lawmakers will have to come back to pass a handful of the 13 spending bills still not done, including the energy and water spending bill that funds the Energy Department.

The House approved a $131 million budget for the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas earlier this year, leaving it $749 million short of the department's request. The Senate did not come up with a number for the project, although negotiations are said to have taken place.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that controls the Energy Department's budget, said he did not expect anything to change on the impasse until after the election.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., had suggested charging nuclear ratepayers an additional fee to help make up the difference, drawing criticism from the nuclear industry.

The Nov. 2 election will likely have an effect on the project, depending on who wins the presidential race and which party controls the House and Senate. While the newly elected would not take office until January, the outcomes could be felt during a lame-duck session.

Steve Kraft, director of waste management at the Nuclear Energy Institute, did not want to speculate on what Congress would do after the election. Kraft said regardless of who wins, he would want them to look at the situation and realize this is a project the needs to move forward.

"This program is not a done deal," Kraft said. "It still has to go through a lot of scientific and regulatory wickets."

In addition to requesting the highest budget for the project since its inception, the department also wanted to change the budget rules for the project. The House approved letting the department tap directly into the Nuclear Waste Fund, an account support by nuclear power ratepayers to fund the repository, but House supporters admitted it would be extremely difficult to get the idea through the Senate, based on Reid 's and Sen. John Ensign's, R-Nev., opposition to it.

Ensign sits on the Senate Budget Committee and stopped the change from getting into the overall budget resolution that guides the spending process.

Until a new budget is established, the department will continue to receive the $577 million it did for this fiscal year. Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said he had no comments on the Yucca budget.