New rules for Yucca budget sought

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, May 18, 2005 | 9:42 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Key House members are meeting to look at how they can get Congress to change budget rules for the Yucca Mountain project.

Efforts to change congressional budget rules on the Nuclear Waste Fund have failed in the past, but House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, said he is talking with David Hobson, R-Ohio, House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee chairman, on how to get the funding change passed this year.

The Bush administration and the nuclear industry strongly support a change in the budget rules that would allow Congress to put money into the Nuclear Waste Fund, an account paid into by nuclear power users specifically earmarked to pay for the Yucca Mountain project. They want Congress to funnel money toward the project without taking money away from other federal programs.

Under current rules, the Yucca project is subject to spending bill caps just like all other federal programs. If lawmakers want to put more money toward Yucca, they must take it from other items in the energy and water spending bill to stay within the limit.

The industry objects to this because the proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has billions of dollars sitting in the fund yet Congress routinely under-funds the program.

Barton did not describe a specific proposal but said he had concerns that roughly $750 million gets put into the fund each year but Congress only spends about $300 million on the project. Other portions of the Yucca budget come from the Defense Department budget because the repository will hold some material from nuclear weapons.

At the nuclear energy conference Tuesday, Barton said he would have to find a way to get the votes, particularly based on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's position in the Senate and strong objection to the proposal, but that it still could happen.

He is looking to add it during House and Senate negotiations on an energy bill, the energy and water spending bill, or a budget bill.

Reid, like Nevada's other lawmakers, strongly objects to the proposal, saying it would remove congressional oversight of the project. Money often translates into how much Congress supports a certain project or how Congress can hold a project accountable by pulling at its purse strings.

Also at Tuesday's conference, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., said he plans to hold a hearing examining the Environmental Protection Agency's work on setting a new radiation standard for the project.

The conference, know as the Nuclear Energy Assembly, sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's main lobbying group, put a positive spin on the industry's attempts to build new nuclear power plants. A new nuclear power plant has not been ordered for more than 25 years, according to the Energy Department.

NEI President Skip Bowman said he wants the industry to "pull the defense off the field and put in the offense."

"The problems of the past are simply problems of the past," Bowman said. "We are in a new day."

Bowman listed Yucca as one of the industry's challenges and urged the audience to put a positive spin on the project, despite the numerous obstacles the projects faces.

"We must make it clear that no one wants this project designed and built correctly and operated safely more than our industry, more than the people in this room," Bowman said. "The Yucca Mountain repository is an industry priority. But it is clear that this project requires some adjustments in our approach to ensure that federal government stewardship of commercial reactor fuel becomes a reality in the near term. We need to tell the truth about Yucca Mountain."

Bowman said "the truth" includes that the repository is not a "dump" where the department intends to throw in waste and walk away but a site that will be monitored for hundreds of years.

He said the department approved storing waste at Yucca after 3,000 scientists and engineers evaluated the site, "a number larger than three and you know what I am talking about," Bowman said, alluding to the ongoing controversy related to U.S. Geological Survey employees who may have falsified scientific information.

"Yucca is not dead," Bowman said at least twice.