New pro-Yucca group formed

Benjamin Grove

Friday, April 22, 2005 | 9:03 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A collection of advocates for a national nuclear dump on Monday is to announce the launch of a new lobbying group, the Yucca Mountain Task Force.

The group's top goals will be advocating more congressional funding for a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and "facilitating" a timely new radiation standard for the containment of highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain.

The founding groups will be the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power industry's top lobby group; the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners; the U.S. Transport Council, a group formed in 2002 to educate the media and public about waste shipping; and the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, the waste strategy coalition's executive director, Martez Norris, said.

Yucca budget shortfalls have long slowed progress of the nuclear waste repository project, frustrating nuclear power industry leaders, as well as officials and utility commissioners in states where waste is piling up at power plants. Yucca advocates have argued that the Energy Department should have more access to a national nuclear waste fund, rather than being limited in spending by Congress every year. So far lawmakers have rejected relinquishing any annual budget control.

The new group's co-chairmen will be David Wright, a South Carolina Public Service Commissioner, and Charles Pray, nuclear safety adviser for Maine.