Thursday, November 06, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Congress settles on budget for Yucca Mountain

Figure $11 million less than Bush requested

WASHINGTON -- Congress settled Wednesday on a new budget for the Yucca Mountain Project that was $11 million less than what President Bush requested.

Officials said $580 million designated for 2004 includes as much as $70 million for spent fuel transportation, the largest earmark to date for a key component the Energy Department had put on the back burner in recent years.

The funding approved by a House-Senate conference committee was acceptable to the Bush administration, the lead House negotiator said.

"DOE said they could live with $580 million, so that was what they got," said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio.

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said $580 million is the largest amount ever set aside by Congress in a given year for the planned high-level nuclear waste repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"We plan to keep moving forward and spending every dime wisely," Davis said.

Differences over the Yucca Mountain Project had been one of the holdups to a $27.3 billion bill that funds the Energy Department, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and parts of the Interior Department in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

A series of deals reached this week on Yucca Mountain and other contentious issues clears the way for Congress to grant final passage to the energy and water bill in the next week or so.

On Yucca Mountain, negotiators compromised between $765 million approved by the House in a Hobson bill earlier this year, and $450 million in a related Senate bill.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a key negotiator and longtime foe of the Yucca Mountain Project, once again tried to minimize project funding. He said it was not easy to get deeper cuts this year out of Hobson, who had declared the nuclear waste project a top priority.

But at a negotiator meeting Wednesday, Reid said the Energy Department is plagued by "distrust and incompetence" and that the Yucca Mountain Project will struggle no matter now much money Congress gives to the Energy Department.

"Yucca Mountain will not come to be," Reid declared.

Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said besides fiscal matters, the Energy Department faces unanswered science questions and ongoing legal problems that threaten its progress in Nevada.

Besides settling on a spending level, negotiators also agreed to strip provisions in the energy bill that had directed the Energy Department how to manage sections of the repository program in the coming year, officials said.

Among other directives, the House bill had told the department to choose a railroad shipping corridor to the Nevada site within 60 days, and suggested up to $30 million be set aside for grants to the state of Nevada and counties.

The final bill appropriates $5 million in Yucca Mountain oversight funding to the state of Nevada and local counties, Reid's office said. It also steers $3.2 million to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent science panel that has played an increasingly important role in reviewing the program.

On transportation, Energy Department budget documents indicate money would be spent next year to develop an environmental impact study of railroad routes in Nevada and to begin procuring "long lead" designs for nuclear waste shipping casks and a cask maintenance facility.