Yucca dump may be losing support

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2005 | 8:18 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The slashed Yucca Mountain budget could be the latest example of the proposed nuclear waste repository steadily losing steam and favor.

The $450 million budget is "just barely enough to keep it alive," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a Yucca supporter and member of the panel that met Monday to finalize a broader energy and water projects spending bill.

The Yucca budget was trimmed as Congress scrambles to make spending cuts in a tight budget year, and as lawmakers rethink whether permanent burial in a geologic repository is the nation's best nuclear waste strategy.

Domenici said the Yucca budget cut was not the beginning of the end for Yucca, but he hinted that there would be soul-searching in Congress over the nation's nuclear waste policy, which now focuses squarely on Yucca.

"It's a beginning of a re-evaluation of a bigger policy, which will include Yucca," he said.

The amount approved is a significant decrease from what was requested -- President Bush asked for $651 million, and the Senate approved $577 million. The program has been around $570 million in each of the last two years.

"This is pretty significant," said Michele Boyd, an analyst for Public Citizen, which opposes Yucca. "It's a pretty clear acknowledgement that the Yucca Mountain program is in deep trouble."

Yucca critics noted that the House-Senate panel earmarked $50 million to pursue the establishment of a waste reprocessing, or recycling, plant. Waste recycling ultimately could reduce the amount of radioactive material destined for an underground geologic repository such as the one proposed at Yucca.

That earmark is being seen by critics as a tacit acknowledgement by Congress that a revamped nuclear waste policy is needed.

"It really is telling," Tessa Hafen, Sen. Harry Reid's spokeswoman, said. "It's an admission that something needs to be done differently."

Critics say Yucca has lost momentum in both Congress, where lawmakers are mulling Yucca alternatives, and inside the Energy Department, which appears to be retooling its Yucca program. In addition to ongoing legal snares and an e-mail controversy that challenged whether Yucca scientific information was falsified, critics point to other evidence:

** Domenici, traditionally a leading Yucca advocate, appears to have cooled in his enthusiasm for Yucca. Last month Domenici cryptically said Yucca "must remain alive," but then added, "I didn't say what it (Yucca) should be." In September, longtime Yucca advocate Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, publicly scrapped his support for Yucca, saying the underground repository no longer made sense. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has said other lawmakers are quietly saying the same thing this year, calling it a "dirty little secret" in Congress that Yucca is dead.

** The Energy Department appears to be looking for ways to reinvigorate the delay-plagued Yucca program. On Oct. 25 the department issued a directive that would require waste to be shipped to Yucca in a standardized container capable of storing waste above-ground. The department denied that the move was a step away from Yucca and toward storing waste at interim, above-ground sites. But Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman also has said no final decisions have been made about the potential for establishing interim sites.

** Energy industry trade publications have been speculating that Domenici and Reid, the Senate minority leader, are quietly negotiating plans for a major shift in waste policy away from Yucca, although staffers for both senators downplay the reports. Domenici told the trade publication Energy Washington Week that he believes the Bush administration is also at work on a new waste strategy.

But Energy Department officials and Yucca advocates in Congress and in the nuclear industry insist that Yucca is on track -- and as vital as ever.

"There are a lot of demands for funding in Congress this year," said Jason Bohne, spokesman for top Yucca contractor Bechtel. "To make a unilateral statement that a cut means a loss of support (for Yucca), I'm not sure that's fair."

Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said the budget cut would "slow" the project, but he declined to say if any jobs would be cut. Stevens sharply denied charges that Yucca is losing favor in Congress, adding that the department hopes that lawmakers will "continue to look favorably" on Yucca.

"It allows us to do what we need to do," Stevens said of the $450 million. "A half a billion dollars is not chump change. It's a significant investment."

Since 1983, the nation's waste policy has been centered on constructing a repository, and nuclear power officials are not about to abandon Yucca just because it has been slowed by years of delay, budget cuts and controversy.

Yucca advocates say the dump site is important to an ambitious industry plan to construct a new generation of U.S. nuclear power plants to feed the nation's growing demand for electricity.

Nuclear industry officials strongly oppose the proposal by Nevada lawmakers that waste be left on site at power plants. That was never a workable long-term solution, industry officials say.

And they say that recycling waste is not an alternative to Yucca because the technology would not erase the need for a geologic repository.

The administration is committed to both Yucca and recycling, Bodman said in a speech Monday at the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference in Washington.

"Solving the problem of how to store spent fuel will reap tremendous benefits for America's future and will help set the stage for an expansion of nuclear power," Bodman said in prepared remarks. "And permanent geological storage at Yucca Mountain offers the safest, most secure solution for dealing with this challenge."

He said that pursuing recycling technology "must be considered not just a worthwhile, but necessary, goal."

Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@lasvegassun.com.