Anti-nuke group’s report: ‘Congress should cancel’ Yucca

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005 | 9:59 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- An anti-nuclear group included the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump on a list of 10 Energy Department radioactive projects for which the group says Congress should slash or cancel funding.

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability delivered its list to the House members and senators who will be finalizing the Energy Department budget once Congress comes back into session next month.

"Congress should cancel the Yucca Mountain project," the alliance proposes in its report released Tuesday. "The site cannot meet environmental protection standards, transportation through 43 states is dangerous and unnecessary and on-site storage facilities can continue to be used."

The alliance represents 34 grass-roots organizations from throughout the nation, including Citizen Alert and the Shundahai Network in Nevada.

The Energy Department requested $651 million for 2006 to fund the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The House approved $661 million for the program, with the additional $10 million earmarked to study a temporary storage site option.

The Senate approved $577 million for the nuclear dump. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that writes the bill.

The alliance says Congress could save almost $2 billion by canceling Yucca and other nuclear-related projects in the bill. They also oppose the Modern Pit Facility, a $7.7 million project that would build a new nuclear weapon trigger plant and $191 million in new nuclear power plant programs.

The nuclear industry strongly supports Yucca and wants Congress to provide even more money for it than the department requested. Nuclear power users pay a fee for every kilowatt of power used specifically to fund the repository.

The industry wants the government to fulfill its requirement to take and dispose of nuclear waste --the waste was supposed to be gone in 1998. The industry objects that ratepayers have put billions of dollars toward a solution they have not seen yet.

The nuclear industry says on-site storage is safe for now but not a permanent solution. The waste needs to go into a geologic repository, as the government has agreed is the best option.

It also insists that waste has been moved from place to place around the country for years without a dangerous release of radiation.