Congressman pushes Yucca action

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, Feb. 4, 2005 | 10:01 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department needs to get moving on shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain if the country is serious about national security, a key lawmaker said Thursday.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who heads the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said the department is "dragging its feet" on the proposed repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"If we are truly concerned about terrorists getting their hands on nuclear material and creating a dirty bomb, we would not be so complacent about leaving spent nuclear fuel stored at reactor sites scattered throughout the country," Hobson said at a meeting of the Arms Control Association.

"Circumstances have forced a change in our priorities and minimizing the number of storage sites is now a serious security requirement. We need to get on with completing Yucca Mountain," said Hobson, whose committee writes the Energy Department's budget bill.

Some repository supporters have pushed the national security side of moving waste to Nevada more since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Their reasoning is that leaving used fuel at 103 nuclear reactors across the country leaves too many terrorists targets while moving the waste to one location would be better.

Hobson said the country needs to do more domestically and internationally to secure nuclear materials, but the department is moving too slow in consolidating its own materials.

He part of the reason for the delay is Nevada Sen. Harry Reid opposition to the program and his position in the Senate. Reid is now the Senate's Minority Leader and the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee that writes the energy budget.

He sarcastically described conferences between the House and Senate on funding the project as "the fun time of year."

Yucca critics, including the congressional delegation, stress that shipping waste across roads and rails just provides moving targets for terrorists and the threat of accidents as well. Some critics deem shipping containers "Mobile Chernobyls" and points to a lack of tests and national planning to move the waste.

Critics also point to the fact the as long as nuclear power plants continue to operate, waste will still be generated and stored on site because it all cannot be moved to Yucca at once, so putting waste in the mountain just creates one more storage site.