Despite Obama’s opposition, Congress tangles over Yucca

By Lisa Mascaro

Sunday, July 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.

President Barack Obama’s plan to terminate the Yucca Mountain project has not stopped pro-dump lawmakers from trying to resurrect the nuclear waste repository north of Las Vegas.

No fewer than six amendments to the House Energy and Water Appropriations bill were offered last week by Republicans to keep Yucca Mountain alive. They sought to restore funding Obama slashed or prevent a shutdown. One Republican measure sought to cut Yucca funding altogether — to force the issue and prove a point that the dump still has support.

None survived.

However, what did remain intact is a single sentence in the accompanying bill report that worries the dump’s foes.

The language attaches a condition to the $5 million Obama is seeking to establish a commission that would look into alternatives to the dump in the desert.

It reads: “The Committee makes the $5 million for the Blue Ribbon Commission available provided that Yucca Mountain is considered in the review.”

The whole point of the commission is to consider alternatives to Yucca Mountain, not to breathe new life into the nuclear waste dump plan.

The commission was the brainchild of Nevada’s senators, Harry Reid and John Ensign, and was meant to answer what comes next after Yucca Mountain is shut down.

Bruce Breslow, executive director of Nevada’s Nuclear Projects Agency, which is fighting the dump, called the report language “a masterful attaching of strings … that would hurt Nevada.”

Breslow thinks the troubling language should give Nevada’s lawmakers pause. But he also expects the line will not survive in the final bill in the Senate.

Nevada’s Democratic lawmakers in the House supported the spending bill, even with the loathsome line.

A spokesman for Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley said the language is nonbinding and likely to be withdrawn. “It’s one last gasp on the part of the people who want nuclear waste to go to Nevada,” the spokesman said.

Democratic Rep. Dina Titus is confident the commission will decide against storing waste in Nevada, her spokesman said. Republican Rep. Dean Heller joined half of his Republican colleagues in voting against the bill.

Under the bill, the Energy Department would receive the $196.8 million Obama requested for the Yucca Mountain project in fiscal 2010 — a minimal amount to allow the licensing process to continue before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Obama has pledged to end Yucca Mountain, but skeptics who oppose the waste repository worry that the administration is playing with fire by providing enough funding to continue the review. Many think the review is proceeding to prevent industry lawsuits.

As the bill heads to the Senate, it offers a reminder of the power the small state of Nevada wields with Reid as the majority leader.

Yucca Mountain was approved in 1987, Reid’s first year in the Senate. As Reid’s profile rose, he engineered budget cuts that have crippled the project. This year is no different.

Yucca’s supporters in Nevada despise Reid for this role. But its opponents rely on Reid’s prowess as their last line of defense.

Although the Senate version allows Obama’s request to proceed, Reid has slashed $24 million from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, limiting its ability to process the Yucca Mountain license. That’s about a 13 percent reduction.

As for the House language insisting that Obama’s new commission include Yucca Mountain, Reid’s office calls it irrelevant.

Even the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main industry lobby, seemed less interested in studying Yucca Mountain than studying something else. “Our greater concern is DOE getting on with the formation … of the panel so the nation can determine the path forward.”