Yep, waste dump still on track for deep-sixing

By Lisa Mascaro

Thursday, July 30, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Another sign of the possible demise of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository could be seen Wednesday on the floor of the Senate as the chamber worked its way through the annual energy spending bill for 2010.

The bill, which passed late in the day, reduces funding to develop the radioactive waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as part of the Obama administration’s vow to terminate the project.

The bill also reflects Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s effort to reduce by half the amount of money to pay for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of Yucca Mountain, potentially curtailing the independent body’s ability to process the dump’s license application.

Unlike the House, which tried this month to salvage the Yucca Mountain project, the Senate was making no such gestures.

Maneuvers to breathe new life into Yucca Mountain did not materialize.

The one effort backed by the nuclear energy industry that succeeded in the Senate was an industry request to halt payments that nuclear energy utility customers have been making into a fund for waste disposal, given that the dump’s development seems unlikely.

Reid said in a statement late Wednesday that the bill’s passage affirms the president’s plan to end the Yucca Mountain project and seek alternatives.

The senator vowed to work on alternatives and “prevent Nevada from ever again being considered as the nation’s nuclear dumping ground.”

In trying to keep good on his campaign promise to Nevadans that the Yucca Mountain project would not happen under his watch, Obama announced a severe financial blow to the project when he unveiled his 2010 budget.

Obama is seeking $198.6 million for Yucca, a fraction of what the Energy Department says is needed to develop the repository.

Yet Reid’s office at the time suggested that further cuts were needed at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Development of Yucca Mountain is now in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s court. The agency plans to spend the next four years reviewing the repository’s license application with hearings in a courtroom-like setting in Las Vegas.

Because Obama did not halt the application process before the commission, some Yucca opponents doubted the project was truly terminated. They worry the application review could proceed until a new president decides to open the dump.

Observers say Obama has allowed Yucca’s application to continue because the administration wants to avoid legal battles with the utility companies while it forms an alternative. The companies have sued the government for failing to take the waste off their hands.

Plus Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate, has said he sees value in allowing the science to play out in the application process.

Still, Reid wanted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cut, and the energy spending bill reduces the president’s request from $56 million to $29 million, a nearly 50 percent slash.

The House and Senate bills have several differences that will need to be resolved for final passage.

The House bill includes a provision that would keep Yucca Mountain on the table as an option before the administration’s new commission that is being formed to study alternative waste sites.

Also to be resolved is whether to grant the industry’s request to cut customers’ payments to the waste fund, which now has amassed $22 billion.

The industry thinks it is unfair for customers to continue paying into the fund if the repository will not be built. But longtime dump foe Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Democrat, said if the industry “wanted to really do something good for families, they would join in our effort to dump Yucca Mountain.”