Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

DOE secretary upbeat about Yucca Mountain deadline

Abraham says proposed funding should keep project on schedule

WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Monday that the Department of Energy will file a license application for a Nevada nuclear waste repository by its goal of next December, but "this will not be easy."

Abraham said a 2004 energy budget that Congress formed last week should contain enough money for DOE to finish preparing a complex licensing package for the Yucca Mountain Project.

"Yes I am confident," Abraham said of the department being able to meet its schedule, when he was asked following a speech at the National Press Club.

But, Abraham added, "this will not be easy" because DOE has had to overcome financial shortfalls from previous years.

"Throughout (the process) this project there has been a challenge for us not just of the mechanical challenges facing a project of this magnitude but we haven't received the funding levels we had requested," he said.

"I believe we will meet our target," Abraham said. "It won't be easy because we have always been kept below the funding levels we have requested."

Abraham also warned that Congress must give DOE enough money to form a transportation program to ship radioactive spent fuel to the proposed repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"We plan to engage states in that process," he said. "It's a priority but it's part of an ongoing process right now that will also require sufficient funding."

DOE officials have estimated Congress has underfunded the project more than $700 million in recent years below what the department requested. Many of the cuts have been engineered by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has sought to slow down the project while Nevada organizes opposition to it.

Last week, negotiators writing a new Energy Department spending bill settled on $580 million for the Yucca Mountain Project next year.

The amount was $11 million less than what President Bush had requested, but several lawmakers said they were told the spending would be enough for DOE to get the license application done.

"We had a number of experts who run the program say this will keep the program on schedule," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

DOE will present its licensing bid to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, initiating a new step in the government's consideration of a nuclear waste repository.

The NRC is expected to take three or four years to weigh a repository license.

DOE officials have set a 2010 opening for a Yucca Mountain repository although the project faces continuing financial challenges in Congress and legal opposition from the state of Nevada and environmental organizations.