Berkley tries again to divert nuke funds

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2005 | 9:45 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., was to tell Congress today that money collected to pay for nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain should be used to research ways to keep the waste at nuclear power plants instead,

Berkley will make her third attempt today to get Congress to approve diverting money from the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for storing spent fuel at power plants longer instead of using the fund to pay for the government's plan to ship the waste to Yucca Mountain. The money is also earmarked to pay for the storage of the waste at Yucca Mountain.

Nuclear power users pay a per-kilowatt-hour fee into the Nuclear Waste Fund, an account specifically set aside to pay for the proposed repository. The fund has accumulated about $16 billion in the past two decades.

Berkley's bill would put the money toward studying how to: decrease waste radiation levels; increase the length of time waste can be stored at nuclear power plants and reduce the amount of transportation of spent fuel.

"The government shall not use any funds for research, development, or implementation of a central high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel repository," the bill text notes.

Berkley has introduced the bill twice before, but it did not go anywhere.

Mitch Singer of Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry's lead lobbying group, said the "NWF should be used for its intended purpose which is to build Yucca Mountain. It's pretty simple for us."