Saturday, November 20, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Bill means Yucca stays alive but won't thrive

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers agreed Friday to spend $577 million on Yucca Mountain in the next year, enough to keep the nuclear waste project alive but with millions less than the Energy Department had requested.

The spending level probably will force the department to re-evaluate segments of the repository program. DOE had asked Congress to spend $880 million, tripling spending for nuclear waste transportation.

DOE spokesman Joe Davis said the department would comment on the Yucca budget when it becomes final. The funding was inserted into a $388 billion government-wide spending bill that Congress was working to complete this weekend.

The department might choose to juggle its priorities, said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

DOE efforts to pursue a repository license have been complicated by a federal appeals court ruling in July that invalidated a 10,000-year radiation safety standard. Also, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission board has ordered DOE to recertify an electronic document database before a license application can be submitted.

"Without the ability to have the license application go forward, they probably will be able to spend some of that money on transportation that they would not have done otherwise," Loux said, including studies of a potential railroad through rural Nevada to the repository complex.

Senior lawmakers who set 2005 spending on energy and water programs compromised on $577 million for Yucca Mountain, the same amount approved last year.

Negotiators declined to add provisions to reclassify a portion of the Yucca Mountain construction fund so that Congress could appropriate larger sums.

Congress also did not address the appeals court ruling.

Aides to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said this week that the White House had asked Congress to reinstate the 10,000-year radiation standard voided by the court, a move that would clear a major obstacle for DOE to gain a license.

Officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget denied that any such request had been made.

Efforts to obtain documentation for such a request were unsuccessful. Some congressional officials said it might have been conveyed verbally.

Critics of the Yucca program said a White House request to reinstate the radiation standards would call into question President Bush's comments in Nevada during an Aug. 12 campaign visit that he would abide by court decisions on the project.

Supporters of the program, including officials at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said they would defend attempts to involve Congress. They said the court's ruling specifically left open the possibility that lawmakers might choose to revisit the radiation standard.