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Wednesday, March 4, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Topics
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- Yucca funding: Another $100 million cut (2-23-2009)
- Once flatlining, now on life support (2-20-2009)
- Bill introduced to abolish nuclear projects agency (2-5-2009)
- What Guantanamo, Yucca have in common: NIMBY issues (1-27-2009)
- Gibbons criticized for downsizing Yucca agency (1-22-2009)
- Obama set to scrap waste site funding (1-15-2009)
President Barack Obama may substantially scale back funding for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in his proposed 2010 budget, but its supporters are not going to go down without a fight in Congress.
Several prominent lawmakers are vowing to try to restore funding for Yucca Mountain as the budget debate moves to Congress and its appropriations committees. Yet they concede they may no longer be the political force they once were in driving the project forward. The ranks of Republican supporters in particular were thinned over the past year.
“I hope it’s a fight,” said Rep. Zack Wamp, R-Tenn., an appropriator on the House Appropriations subcommittee for Energy and Water Development, which handles Yucca’s budget. “Probably the votes are fewer this year than last year, but the fight’s a just one.”
The battle may likely play out most forcefully in the House, where lawmakers have funded Yucca Mountain at healthy levels over the years only to see the money reduced in the Senate.
With Obama in the White House and Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada as majority leader, lawmakers wanting to move the project forward know they face an uphill battle.
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, the top Republican on the appropriations subcommittee, said he is concerned that Obama is pulling the plug after $10 billion has been spent developing Yucca Mountain as the repository for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.
“I think we need a debate,” Frelinghuysen said. “It seems to me we need to continue toward the goal of opening up a repository that can serve our national needs. I’d hate to see something less than that repository built.”
A spokesman for Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the congressman is eager to engage on the issue.
“So the new White House staff thinks it’s safer, cheaper and more convenient to have 55 temporary dumps where high-level nuclear waste can sit and be happy until Elvis comes back,” spokesman Larry Neal said. “Next they get to explain why that’s a swell idea instead of an awful one. Boy, we can hardly wait.”
In his proposed budget, Obama vowed to spend only the funding necessary for the Energy Department to continue pursuing its application for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license Yucca. The licensing process is expected to take up to four years.
Obama has yet to attach a sum in the budget for Yucca, but it is likely to be far from the nearly $1 billion former President George W. Bush once sought for the project.
Many Washington observers believe Obama is keeping the project alive until an alternative is developed only to prevent lawsuits from utility companies that are storing spent nuclear waste at their power plants across the nation. The government already faces several billion dollars in liability from utility lawsuits because the Energy Department is 20 years late on its promise to open Yucca Mountain.
Some involved in the discussion are considering the creation a committee to devise alternatives to storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, now the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said she expects a debate over Yucca to unfold with the coming budget and energy bills in Congress.
“If the administration is going to go a different way on Yucca Mountain, then it can’t just assume that these issues are resolved — that the liability issue somehow disappears, that the issue of what we do with the disposal of the waste is resolved,” she said. “It’s not. It’s just left hanging. To just use a budget tool to stop a process that we put in place decades ago is not a positive resolution.”
But other senators see the project as doomed, particularly on their side of the Capitol, where Reid and Republican Sen. John Ensign both oppose the project, as do Nevada’s three House members.
Utah Republican Sen. Robert Bennett, an appropriator on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development that handles Yucca Mountain’s budget, believes Obama will win this battle.
Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina on the Energy committee, said that with Reid and Ensign opposed to Yucca, “it’s probably going to end up a giant wine cellar.”
Those on the wrong side of the law always claim they are innocent. Just watch Cops.
Likewise, Reid and Obama are on the wrong side of the law on Yucca Mountain yet claim victory at killing it.
This story is the first indication that their claim might not stand up in the public court of Congress.
"Many Washington observers believe Obama is keeping the project alive until an alternative is developed only to prevent lawsuits from utility companies that are storing spent nuclear waste at their power plants across the nation. The government already faces several billion dollars in liability from utility lawsuits because the Energy Department is 20 years late on its promise to open Yucca Mountain."
In fact the DOE is already paying off these lawsuits with taxpayer dollars.
While Obama plays this Harry Reid re-election game the LA is still proceeding on the approval process.
When 2010 is over Harry may be gone and and the project will be back.
If Harry wins the LA is 3 years into a 4 year process and will be approved.
With approval come a scientific basis to move forward to build Yucca.
Harry Reid has never taken the only legal way to stop the project which is to change the law - the NWPA
Unfortunately they have awoken too late. The project is hemorrhaging the brain trust of scientists and engineers that have been involved for decades - we can't just sit back and hope for more funding - we received the layoff notices and are looking for work.
This is Harry's plan to lower our taxes - if we are out of work, we don't have to pay as much in income taxes.
Harry has shown just how much he cares about the careers of all the scientists and engineers and is also being extremely helpful - he has added a link on his web page to the Nevada unemployment office.
Obama promised to kill Yucca.
Now, is breaking that promise, too!!!!!!
I think he that might break a record on the number of promises broken in the 1st 100 days.
Put it in the Luxor...
Promised to Kill Yucca....now keeping it alive.
Promised to not to raise taxes on those making under $250,000....Raised taxes on those making less than $250,000.
Promised to list bills on his website for 5 days before signing them into law....Sign then into law without putting them on his website
Promised to not appoint lobbyists to high level positions.....appointed lobbyists to high level positions
Promised to list executive orders on his website before signing them.....Has signed executive orders even without telling the public before hand much less then putting them on a website
Promised to fight earmarks....punted and said perhaps next time
The Yucca Mountain Project was never about safety. It has been governed by politics since the beginning. Yes, as a Yucca insider I will admit that Nevada got the short straw because they were politically weak - But that decision has nothing to do with whether the site is suitable or not - Yucca Mountain is suitable (other sites could very well have been suitable also). But please, don't try to argue that the site is being stopped because it is unsafe - there is too much real science to demonstrate otherwise.
This is just another example of politicians putting off decisions (and costs) to future generations to solve - a "not during my administration" cop out. For 50 years this country has put off a decision, Yucca Mountain was an answer for permanent disposal, NOT TEMPORARY STORAGE - yes, there are other answers but Congress picked Yucca Mountain as the path 20 years ago. I look forward to the wisdom to come from Washington on the new path. I look forward to how Washington will pay back the $20 billion collected to pay for the repository and the untold Billions in legal damages for canceling the program.
If not Yucca Mountain, then where?
If not 2009, then when?
If not 92 billion dollars then how much?
If not 2 billion dollars/year in legal penalties, then how much?
President Obama, punting to the future is not leadership! Ignoring a Congressional law is not Constitutional! Being Reid's houseboy is not Presidential!
Playing Illinois politics was fine in Illinois. You are now the free world's leader. Try to play the part and leave Searchlight Nevada politics alone....
The Yucca Mountain Project was never about safety. It has been governed by politics since the beginning. Yes, as a Yucca insider I will admit that Nevada got the short straw because they were politically weak - But that decision has nothing to do with whether the site is suitable or not - Yucca Mountain is suitable (other sites could very well have been suitable also). But please, don't try to argue that the site is being stopped because it is unsafe - there is too much real science to demonstrate otherwise.
for a supporter of yucca you have been reading and believing the loux lies for too long. yes there was some politics in the 1986 selection, but it was mostly science based. read the multiattribute utility analysis that compared the sites -- yucca was clearly the best site. also, nevada had a long history of not wanting the federal government to look at other sites. check out the resolution passed by the state back in 1975 ajr15.
The consequences for Americans in general (not including Nevadans):
Nuclear waste generated by our nation's utilities and defense programs is currently stored at more than 120 aboveground sites within 75 miles of over 160 million Americans and nearly every major waterway. Shutting down the Yucca Mountain Project, which would have asked about 1 million Americans to reside within 90 miles of an underground storage site with no appreciable risks to their water supply, all but guarantees that the current state of affairs will continue in one form or another.
The cost to Americans in general (including Nevadans):
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended (in 1987), required all nuclear plant operators to sign a contract with DOE for the removal of their spent nuclear fuel and to pay a fee to the federal government. The Act created a fund called the Nuclear Waste Fund to collect the proceeds from those fees. The contracts signed by the utilities stipulated that DOE would begin accepting and removing fuel in 1998, a deadline that has obviously passed. As a result, the utilities have sued the government for breach of contract. Moreover, federal courts have ruled in lawsuits that the contracts are valid and that the damages incurred by the contract holders cannot be paid from the Nuclear Waste Fund, which was created by law for a different purpose.
As of 2007, some of the lawsuits had been settled and 55 were still in litigation, though precedent suggests that most if not all will eventually be settled in favor of the plaintiffs; the violation of the contracts instituted under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is, in legal terms, clearly a no-brainer. In 2007, DOE estimated that, even if the repository were to open in 2017, total taxpayer liability would be approximately $7 billion. That number was predicted to increase by an average of $0.5 billion for each year of further delay, which means that the later-revised opening date of 2020 puts us closer to $10 billion in eventual damages. Settlement payments through November 2007 totaled $342 million from the U.S. Treasury's Judgment Fund, which of course is funded by taxpayers like us.
And to Gordon:
Your hypocrisy is pretty breathtaking if you are accusing others of "empty rhetoric" and yet claiming that on-site "bunkers" for storing nuclear waste is a plausible alternative to Yucca Mountain.
I would bet that, on other occasions, you have picked up talking points from the State's anti-Yucca propaganda machine and parroted them, perhaps arguing that "the 'ultra-safe' waste canisters will corrode," or that "water will get into the repository!"
And now the idea of placing the waste in a shallow hole that in most cases will be next to a water table or other source that supplies drinking water strikes you as perfectly acceptable? So you're willing to subject 160 of your fellow Americans to risks far greater than any Nevadan would face due to Yucca Mountain? Are you really trying to suggest that the solution you mention is any kind of permanent solution, as opposed to yet another deferral of the problem that puts off our responsibility to find a reasonable, fair, and safe solution?
Please. Your political commentary is often on-point, and I typically agree with it. But you really demolish whatever credibility you can claim when you try to discuss the actual technical and scientific issues involved in addressing the nuclear waste problem. But then again, I suppose that makes you a typical opponent of the repository, in the mold of Harry Reid, Berkley, Ensign, and Bob Loux.