Senate panel approves $577 million for Yucca

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, June 17, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Appropriations Committee approved more than $330 million in Nevada projects along with the Yucca Mountain budget Thursday.

The committee approved $577 million for the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. This is the same amount the project has to work with this year, but $74 million less than the administration's request for fiscal year 2006.

Notably absent from the Senate version of the bill is any money set aside for a temporary storage site for nuclear waste because of Yucca's continued delay. The House bill fully funds the Yucca project with $651 million and added $10 million specifically for an unnamed interim storage site.

"Whatever we did, they didn't do," said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who heads the House committee that writes the energy spending bill. "This will just be something we have to discuss in a rational fashion at some point."

Once the bill is approved on the Senate floor, selected House and Senate negotiators will meet to work out differences between the bill.

Earlier this week Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, called Hobson's interim storage proposal "half-baked." Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who heads the subcommittee, also opposes the idea, and said he does not want it in this year's bill.

Hobson, however, said everything is still open for discussion.

"I want something done," Hobson said. "We will sit down and, hopefully, rationally discuss various matters."

The bill also includes $12.5 million for Nevada to use for Yucca program oversight, with $3.5 million going to the state, $8.5 million going to the counties and an additional $500,000 for Nye County. State and county officials use the money for watchdog programs and research to evaluate how the repository would affect Nevada and its counties. The bill also rejects the administration's proposal to give oversight money to local governments every 21 months, versus annually.

Also included in the bill:

$20 million for Security Force and Special Response Team upgrades at the Device Assembly Facility at the Nevada Test Site, a $100 million underground bunker used for nuclear weapons programs.

At least 17 projects or partnerships with UNLV, including $7 million for the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative, $6 million for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, $4 million to study the solar production of hydrogen and $4 million to study hydrogen fuel cells.

$48,375,000 for U.S. Bureau of Reclamation project in Nevada, including $2,775,000 for the Lake Mead/Las Vegas Wash program and $3,432,000 for Southern Nevada water recycling.

$67,276,500 for Army Corps of Engineer projects in Nevada, including $5 million for the Urban Floodwater Initiative and $18 million for Tropicana-Flamingo flood control project.