Domenici book cites need for re-evaluation of nuke waste

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, Oct. 15, 2004 | 9:47 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Yucca Mountain project needs full funding, but the government needs to re-evaluate how it manages nuclear waste if it wants nuclear power use to grow, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., writes in a book published today.

Domenici, the Senate's chief nuclear power supporter, is holding up the Energy Department budget in the Senate until some compromise can be reached to fund the proposed federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, despite the fact he is still not convinced burying the spent fuel is the right policy.

"You may be surprised that I'm supporting the Yucca Mountain budget when many of you have heard me express doubt that the strategy of Yucca Mountain -- an open fuel cycle -- is the right one," Domenici said in remarks prepared for a Nuclear Energy Institute conference this week in Florida. "I do have real doubts that it is the best long-term choice. ... But Yucca Mountain is needed now, to provide the nation with assurance that we have a path forward on spent fuel management."

The department requested $880 million for next year's Yucca budget, but so far the House has only approved $131 million because Congress has not approved a separate proposal to fund the difference by changing budget rules on the Nuclear Waste Fund. The fund is an account of money paid into by nuclear ratepayers to support the repository.

The Senate has not passed its initial bill yet and will not take any further action until after Election Day. The project is now operating under the 2004 level of $577 million, which Domenici said "maintains progress" but is not enough for it to move forward.

Domenici said it's unclear whether Congress can move beyond the continuing resolution.

He said he is not holding up the spending bill to get the budget rule changed but to figure out a way to get more money to the program.

"The House appropriations bill has a very low funding level for Yucca, there is no room for negotiation with the House unless we find some money in the bill that the House would give up from other programs," Domenici told the Sun in an interview Thursday. "It's no use kidding anyone, $131 million is way too low. I can't reconcile that."

Domenici, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the Yucca project and almost all other Energy Department programs every year, said other issues such as nuclear weapons funding are also holding up the bill.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who kept the proposed funding change out of Congress's budget guide, said Domenici does not want other programs to lose funding.

New Mexico is home to the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said the problem is that the department requested almost $1 billion for a program while having to fund other important programs in the same bill. Government projects compete for funding because each spending bill has a limit on it.

Ensign and Reid emphasized they do not oppose nuclear power.

"Nuclear power can be a viable type of energy if we deal with the waste policy," Ensign said. "That's two big letters there -- 'i-f'."

Reid, likewise, said: "I'm not opposed to nuclear power, I'm just opposed to what they plan to do with the waste."

Based on the recent court decisions and other problems possibly delaying the Yucca program, Ensign thinks Congress may have to revisit the country's nuclear waste policy.

During a 1998 visit to a French nuclear waste storage, La Hauge, Domenici writes about "peaceful dairy cows grazing near the facility" and how he has "never forgotten the moment when I walked out onto the concrete floor of their high-level waste storage area, and stood on top of the canisters of the vitrified high-level wastes.

France uses a reprocessing and recycling method that reduce the amount of waste by four or five times, according to the book.

"It helped to confirm my belief that we have to do better for the American public than simply dispose of spent fuel in Yucca Mountain our waste management policies need significant rethinking," he wrote.

Domenici, who is also chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the country's energy policy. could revive a push for a 50- to 75-year interim nuclear waste storage facility until Yucca opens beginning next year, he said, although it does not necessarily have to be in Nevada.

"With interim storage we buy time for serious research on alternative strategies for spent fuel,"he writes in the book. "At the same time we should continue scientific studies toward realization of our first repository for high-level waste."

Domenici stresses in his book: "A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy," that "failure to license, construct, and operate the nation's first waste repository, or to agree on an alternative management strategy, could have a devastating impact on the potential resurgence of the U.S. nuclear industry."

"You can't say, ' Stop Yucca and keep the nuclear power option alive,' " he said in an interview. But, he said, he also does not want to see any delays in the project stop advancement of new nuclear power plants or research into other ways to handle the waste.

Chapter 9 of the 275-page book,"The Waste Disposal Conundrum," explains the history of the nation's nuclear waste policy in great detail, as well as Domenici's theory that if nuclear power use increases, nuclear fuel needs will also increase so the government should think now about way to get the fuel, namely from what is now deemed "waste."

"Depending on our future power demand and electricity options, we may someday need to recover the tremendous energy that remains in spent nuclear fuel", he writes. "No matter what our future course of action may be, a geologic repository will be needed for the disposal of some of the residual wastes."

He writes that is he not proposing the country start reprocessing spent fuel today but is increasingly convinced the government should research on it. He said the government should do more studies of transmutation, a method that would reduce the volume and toxicity of wastes that would allow the government to send less waste to Yucca and allow nuclear power to grow.