Print
E-mail
Share
digg
Newsvine
Facebook
Stumble
Technorati
reddit
Fark
twitterFeds to slash Yucca funds as project maintains life
Monday, Nov. 9, 2009 | 3:41 p.m.
Sun coverage
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is proposing to severely reduce Yucca Mountain's budget next year, an expected move as President Barack Obama pledged to zero out funds for the proposed nuclear waste dump in fiscal 2011.
Yet it remains unclear if the administration will take the next step of withdrawing the license application, which would be the most serious action taken under the Obama administration to kill the project.
The Energy Department is seeking $46.2 million to close out the project next year, one-tenth of what has been requested for the project in recent years, the trade publication The Energy Daily reported today. The proposal would be part of the White House budget presented to Congress early next year.
Without adequate funding, the project cannot continue its license review before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The publication said the Energy Department plans to abandon the license application next month.
However, sources could not confirm today if Energy Secretary Steven Chu intends to actually withdraw the application next month or is simply proposing the reduced funds.
Nevada opponents of the dump want the license withdrawn and the site declared unsuitable – legal terms that would prevent another administration from re-starting the effort.
Obama pledged to withdraw the license application as part of his plans to kill the nuclear waste project as he campaigned in Nevada. But he has so far allowed the process to limp along on a severely reduced budget.
Foes of the dump warn that until the license is withdrawn the project could remain dormant, but alive.
Bruce Breslow, executive director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, which is fighting the dump, said a withdrawal of the application is “what we have been urging.”
Discussion: 13 comments so far…
Post a comment
- Most Read
- Discussed
- Most E-mailed
- Three arrested in fatal shooting of Metro officer
- Franchione potential early candidate for UNLV football post
- Police: 3 arrested in officer’s death have gang ties
- Big fight headed for a New Frontier?
- Mayor: Morale not good among LV city employees
- Creditors want to expand probe of Station Casinos deal
- MGM Mirage (finally) makes George Strait show official
- Reserve Rebels didn’t have time to panic
- Hotels rein in risque advertising campaigns
- $60 million to stabilize neighborhoods buys five homes
Blogs
Elsewhere
Marquardt v. Sonnen scheduled for UFC 109
Bloggity, Bloggity, Bloggity
Will a fourth consecutive title by Jimmie Johnson be good or bad for NASCAR?
Top Chef: Las Vegas
The Jet Stream: And then there were four
Top Chef Episode 12: On keeping it simple
Miech Again
Chilly start for Chace, but Stanback says he'll warm up (1 Comment)
Elsewhere
Harvard Poker Pro: Texas Hold 'Em skills can help traders
Oscar De La Hoya wants to see Pacquiao/Mayweather
- Live chat
- Tuesday, noon PST
- Chat with Krista Creelman
- Problem Gambling Center executive director Krista Creelman will answer questions about gambling addiction from Las Vegas Sun readers from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. ... Submit question
Calendar »
- 21 Sat
- 22 Sun
- 23 Mon
- 24 Tue
- 25 Wed
-
UFC 106 at Mandalay Bay Events Center
Mandalay Bay Events Center | 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.
-
The Four Tops at The Orleans Showroom
Orleans Hotel-Casino
-
Julio Iglesias at the Las Vegas Hilton
Las Vegas Hilton
-
The Four Tops at The Orleans Showroom
Orleans Hotel-Casino
The Sun
Locally owned and independent for more than 50 years.
I don't want all the nuclear wastes dumped in our state either but I'm curious where are we storing all our current stockpile of nuclear wastes. Leave them in our backyards until we figure out what to do with them?
unclegig- Waste from nuclear power plants is currently stored on-site. Seems expensive and dangerous to maintain so many separate waste facilities. Transporting it is dangerous too. Who wants a truck or a train with this waste rolling through their town? There are quite a few scientists working on methods to neutralize the waste, but the feds say a workable solution is decades off.
While Obama and Reid may direct Chu to withdraw the license application, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act has a detailed legal framework for developing a repository at Yucca Mountain, and at this stage of the project has no provision for withdrawing the application. The only legal method to end the Yucca Mountain repository would be to change the law, i.e., the NWPA. Will Congress have the guts to take on Reid and Obama now that the early administration freight train is derailed? If not, one or more of the other 49 states will have their chance to a repository. Instead of being 100 miles out in the desert next to 1000 exploded nuclear bombs, these repositories will be much nearer major population centers. Additionally, since it has taken over 25 years to get this far on Yucca Mountain, it is quite likely that nuclear waste will stay where it is for the next 35 to 100 years if not forever.
millions of tons of nuke waste moves on our roads already. How do you think the transport old bombs and other materials?
I'll take $5000 per adult royalty like Alaska does with the pipeline!
Bye Bye Jobs... Now Seems Like A Good Time To Fire People... Every Type of Experience Level Would Have Benefited. Janitors, Truckers, Engineers, Construction Workers, ETC... WAY TO GO... Not to mention the financial benefits every citizen of this great state could have received. But everyone is doing really well so I guess we do not need something that would put more people to work and extra money in all our pockets.
Not to mention the benefits of this Clean energy...
We don't need the jobs, we have the casinos. Thanks harry.
It is not only $5000 but it is $5000 tax free and that is only oil this is alot more dangerous. Show me the money and stop wasting money fighting it.
13 billion down the drain. Oh well, its only taxpayer money.
You WILL get money like Alaska. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act calls for Nevada to receive $10MM a year. That would be about $4.73 per person. Except that it must be used for "mitigation" efforts. Unlike Alaska, we don't own the natural resource. We'd be taking everyone else's waste and storing it on federal land we don't own. And Nevada only gets that money if it forfeits it's right to object and participate in the license hearing. Not a good deal for Nevada.
Just more stupidty that started in the 1970s. Once again show me one death that can be attributed in the US Navy due to Nuclear Power and it has now run on Nuclear Power for over 50 uears?????? Another sequence to Dumb and Dummer in action. The lead DUMBELL is located in the Whitehouse these days.
Success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard child.
The one thing I agree with our "Cash for Clunkers President" He can't seem to do anything right. I believe he just wants to turn America into a Socialist country instead of HIM moving to a Socialist country which is what i suggest he do. Yucca Mountain project should and needs to go. Of course, our president can't make a decision because he's simply not prepared as a president should be. Killing funding for the project is a step in the right direction but so is electing a president that is actually prepared for the job.
Okay all of you anti-nuke environmentalist Yucca haters, I'm going to say it again:
What Harry Reid endlessly refers to as "the deadliest substance on earth," i.e., plutonium, is indeed deadly. But is it in fact "the deadliest"? How does one quantify it?
The environmentalist fringe is fond of telling us that the current inventory of plutonium, if distributed equally and ingested, is capable of killing 10 billion people. Wow. That sounds deadly indeed. One would think that the amount of plutonium originally destined for Yucca Mountain would be more than enough to kill the entire population of Las Vegas, if not the state of Nevada.
But wait a sec: If official stats are to be believed, we produce enough chlorine gas to kill 400 TRILLION people. We produce enough phosgene to kill 20 TRILLION people. We produce enough barium to kill 100 BILLION people (ten times more than plutonium could kill).
Hey, but isn't barium widely used in medical procedures?
Anyhow, at least we're not exposed to chemicals such as phosgene, and the stuff it's used to make, like methyl isocyanate.
Oh, but wait: Wasn't it methyl isocyanate that leaked out of a plant in Bhopal, killing 6,000 people in 48 hours? Don't some estimates say the eventual death toll was 20,000, with an estimated 250,000 suffering adverse health consequences?
Good thing they don't make that stuff here in good ol' Home Town USA.
What? We produce about 4 million kilograms of methyl isocyanate in the U.S. every year? About 2 million tons of phosgene worldwide every year?
Nah, that couldn't be, or else the same environmentalists who try to scare us about Yucca Mountain would be warning us about the risk of chemical plants right in our own backyard. (Where's your NIMBY now?)