Yucca funds fall short of president’s ‘05 request

Friday, July 1, 2005 | 11:17 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON -- The Senate approved $577 million for the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project in a bill passed this morning and did not include additional money to begin research into temporary waste storage.

The House approved $661 million for the project in May, with $10 million specifically set aside for the department to produce a plan for above ground storage as a backup for the delayed underground geologic repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Some lawmakers worry that temporary storage could become permanent and the House plan alarmed lawmakers representing sites such as the Hanford complex in Washington state that were mentioned in a report accompanying the House bill.

Yucca Mountain, approved by Bush in 2002, is planned as a national repository for 77,000 tons of defense and commercial nuclear waste. The government was supposed to take waste in 1998, but a series of setbacks have pushed the opening date to 2012 or 2015.

The White House requested $651 million for the Yucca Mountain project.

Research into the feasibility of a bunker-busting nuclear weapon would also be kept alive under the $31.2 billion energy and water spending bill passed around 1 a.m. Friday.

The bill passed 92-3 after a debate over whether to spend $4 million for research into the bunker buster nuclear warhead, which would be aimed at penetrating underground enemy bunkers.

The House measure contains no funds for the bunker buster, officially called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Critics say the weapon is unworkable and that the development of a new nuclear weapon would be the wrong signal for the United States to send to countries such as North Korea while trying to persuade them to shelve their weapons programs.

"A bunker buster cannot penetrate into the Earth deeply enough to avoid massive casualties and the spewing of millions of cubic feet of radioactive materials into the atmosphere," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said.

Supporters of the weapon won a 53-43 vote. They said its funding was only for a feasibility study to see whether a new, sufficiently hardened casing can be developed for existing warheads to see whether it could penetrate the earth sufficiently to destroy reinforced underground bunkers.

The underlying Senate measure provides $1.5 billion more than both Bush's request and a version that passed the House last month. Even so, the chamber declined to fully fund Bush's $651 million request for the troubled Yucca Mountain facility, freezing spending for it at $577 million. The Senate also repelled a House effort to establish temporary storage sites as a backup to Yucca Mountain.

Instead, the Senate would funnel $5.3 billion into the Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for waterways and flood control projects, providing almost $1 billion more than Bush asked for.

And Energy Department nuclear research labs located in the home state of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., would get an impressive boost as well.

The Senate did meet Bush's request for $339 million for a new plant at the federal Savannah River complex in South Carolina to produce mixed-oxide fuel. The new facility is a key part of the Bush administration's effort to safeguard the tons of excess weapons-grade plutonium held by both the United States and Russia and reduce the risks of the material being obtained by terrorists or a rogue state.

The House bill provided just $35 million for the mixed-oxide plant.