Saturday, July 19, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

LAWMAKERS' APPEAL: Early Yucca storage plan dropped

But House passes bill including $765 million for nuclear waste project

WASHINGTON -- House leaders heeded the pleas of Nevada's two Republican lawmakers Friday and agreed to set aside new studies of early nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain.

After initial appeals to the bill's author failed, Reps. Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons said they took their case up the ladder to Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

In the end, Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, a subcommittee chairman who has declared the Yucca Mountain Project his top energy priority, relented and agreed to drop a segment of an aggressive program to speed development of a Nevada nuclear waste repository.

As the House debated a $27.1 billion energy and water spending bill for fiscal 2004, Hobson, Gibbons and Porter engaged in a scripted discussion. Hobson promised to eliminate a provision directing the Energy Department to revive studies that could lead to waste storage at the Yucca site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, three years or more before a repository is complete.

Hobson said he would recommend that $4 million set aside to fund the studies be directed to bolster security of radioactive spent fuel now stored at power plants.

"I understand the sensitivity on the issue of early acceptance," Hobson said.

Gibbons emerged from the House chamber declaring, "This was a big victory today. We've taken away the issue of interim storage."

Porter said it was a "major, major step" to win a concession in the House, where pro-Yucca sentiment runs strong.

Porter tried to take it a step further. He and Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., sponsored an amendment that would have taken $30 million out of the Yucca Mountain Project and directed it to renewable energy research.

The amendment was killed, 251-153. Opponents argued too much work remains on the Yucca program to cut its funding.

"I'm sorry to say to my friends in Nevada, but that is not in the national interest," said Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. "Yucca Mountain is that important. We must move forward."

Nevada lawmakers focused on their accomplishment as the House went on to pass, 377-26, the energy and water appropriations bill containing a record $765 million for the Yucca Mountain Project.

Both Gibbons and Porter voted against the bill.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., remained in Las Vegas this week to care for her ailing mother, Estelle Auslander.

"Removing the threat of interim waste storage from this legislation makes a bad bill a little better, but I strongly oppose the increase in funding to Yucca Mountain," Berkley said in a statement.

Lisa Gue, a policy analyst for Public Citizen, which campaigns against the Yucca repository, said getting the interim storage provision dropped was "better than nothing," but otherwise she expressed disappointment.

"I don't mean to entirely dismiss it, but at the end of the day we have House approval of the biggest Yucca Mountain budget ever, and I think that's a setback," Gue said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Gibbons and Porter should be complimented.

"This was an issue we didn't need," Reid said of early storage. "I wish the (budget) numbers weren't as high, and I know Gibbons and Porter do too."

Reid engineered a competing Senate bill this week containing only $425 million for Yucca Mountain. Congress will settle on a final number later this year.

While the House bill called only for new studies of early waste acceptance strategy, it struck a strong chord among Nevada leaders. They waged a fight against an interim storage bill in 2000. The bill made it through Congress but was vetoed by President Clinton.

The interim storage idea is to place nuclear waste in above-ground canisters at Yucca Mountain while the Energy Department continues to build an underground repository. Nevada leaders say they fear if the repository program collapses, nuclear waste would remain at the site indefinitely.

Porter said he told House leaders that an above-ground facility "would be a danger to the people of Nevada and would be intolerable."

Gibbons said he appealed to DeLay after Hobson initially rejected requests to strip the provision. A trip to Iraq last week interrupted the effort.

Porter separately went to Hastert as well as DeLay and a half-dozen other Republicans including several with ties to the House Republican campaign committee. He also sought advice from Reid, in a meeting attended by their chiefs of staff.

Both Nevada Republicans said that, in their talks with leaders, they did not discuss the impact a harmful Yucca bill might have on next year's campaigns in the state.

"This was about doing the right thing, not about a political agenda," Porter said.

The politics of Yucca Mountain didn't need to be spelled out to Hastert and DeLay, according to a congressional official. "It didn't need to be brought up; they knew the implications."