Bush plans $191 million for new nuke plants

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2005 | 9:54 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush aims to spend $191 million on his goal of opening new U.S. nuclear power plants -- and proposes spending $651 million on the Yucca Mountain repository for waste the nation's aging plants have already produced.

Bush also intends to continue cleaning up the remains of the Cold War-era nuclear weapons program at the Nevada Test Site while also making preparations for what could be a new era of nuclear bomb testing.

Those plans were included in the $23.4 billion Energy Department budget, part of the $2.57 trillion federal budget proposal for fiscal year 2006 that Bush sent to Congress on Monday.

The department budget is $475 million less than last year, reflecting a broader austerity in Bush's federal budget proposals, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said at a briefing Monday.

Cuts were made in a number of department programs, he said. "It required a lot of tough decisions and a lot of trade-offs," Bodman said.

The department budget includes a proposal to spend $81.8 million for continued clean-up at the Test Site. That's a $1.2 million increase from last year.

No nuclear weapons tests have been conducted since 1992 at the Nevada Test Site, the sprawling former nuclear weapons proving ground with its nearest border roughly 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. An intensive clean-up program began there in 1997 and about $624 million has been spent there since then, said Darwin Morgan, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an Energy Department affiliate.

The Test Site program, part of a larger Energy Department program aimed at cleaning nuclear weapons sites nationwide, is slated for completion in 2027.

Clean-up projects at the site include loading radioactive soils into barrels for burial at the site. Workers dispose of low-level radioactive material in several areas, including a 40-foot deep trench and in craters originally created by underground tests. Workers also load packages of dirt, debris, and portions of demolished buildings from other U.S. weapons sites into the dump sites.

Test Site managers also monitor ground water for radioactivity and direction flows inside the Test Site to make sure no problems are carried to water supplies outside the site. And they oversee hazardous materials clean-up projects associated with the nuclear testing, such as fuel spills from drill rigs used to dig around the Test Site, Morgan said.

President Bush has made no overt indication that he would call for renewed nuclear testing at the site, and Defense Department officials have said he is not preparing to make that decision. But two of Bush's budget proposals open the possibility of new tests.

In one, Bush proposes to spend $4 million to renew research into a nuclear bunker buster bomb designed to burrow hundreds of feet before detonation. Congress scrapped funding for the study last year.

In another, Bush has proposed $25 million to continue preparing the Nevada Test Site so that it would be ready for a new generation of nuclear tests within 18 months if the president ever decided such tests were necessary.

"It seems like while the right hand is directing the clean-up, the left hand is getting ready to make more of a mess," said Michele Boyd, who tracks nuclear issues for the consumer group Public Citizen.

Nevada's two Democrats in Congress oppose the bunker buster bomb, while the state's three Republicans have said they could support it if it is deemed important to national security.

The five lawmakers have said they support preparing the Test Site to the point where it could be ready for new tests within 18 months -- but they say Bush would have to make a strong case for actually resuming tests.

The Bush budget includes $191 million for nuclear research and development programs, an increase of $21 million. Included are two programs with boosted budgets this year: $56 million for a program called Nuclear Power 2010, aimed at speeding the process of issuing new site permits for three new plants; and $45 million for the Generation IV nuclear energy initiative -- research and development of a next-generation nuclear reactor.

No new nuclear plants have been constructed in this country for more than 35 years, in part because of public anxiety about nuclear plants and uncertainty about disposal of nuclear waste. But nuclear industry officials have said their biggest hurdles have been the cost and hassle associated with developing, siting and constructing a new plant.

Industry leaders hailed Bush.

"This reflects the Bush administration's strong commitment to have advanced nuclear power plants be a key element of the nation's energy future," said John Kane, senior vice president for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a top industry lobby group.

But nuclear critics slammed Bush for investing in new plants and Yucca Mountain.

"Before we start adding to our nuclear reactor arsenal, we ought to take that money and put it in research and development of renewable energy resources," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., supports nuclear energy research, but he and the rest of the Nevada delegation oppose Yucca Mountain. He and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have vowed to fight for lower funding for the repository project.

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