Friday, September 09, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY: Bush picks Sproat for Yucca post

Nominee is nuclear industry veteran

WASHINGTON -- Edward "Ward" Sproat, a nuclear industry executive from Pennsylvania, was nominated Thursday by President Bush to lead the Yucca Mountain Project.

Sproat was named director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which oversees development of an underground repository in Nevada and a system to transport nuclear waste to the site from commercial power reactors and federal plants.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Sproat will be charged with reinvigorating a program buffeted by technical and legal setbacks that have caused a projected repository opening to be delayed into the next decade.

The Yucca project has been headed by interim leaders since Margaret Chu resigned as director in February.

Sproat is managing partner of a consulting firm, McNeil, Sproat & Associates, based in Berwyn, Pa. He has held executive posts at Exelon Corp., the nation's largest nuclear operator, and PECO Energy, the largest utility in Pennsylvania.

Industry officials said Sproat is well known as the lead negotiator in a nuclear waste settlement that Exelon completed with DOE in 2004. DOE agreed to pay Exelon for keeping used nuclear fuel at its power reactors until a Yucca repository could be opened about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

In turn, Exelon agreed to drop lawsuits charging DOE with breach of contract for failing to meet a 1998 deadline to have a repository ready to accept spent fuel.

Sproat in 2002 also was chief operating officer of a venture in South Africa to develop an advanced Pebble Bed Modular Reactor.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade association, applauded the nomination, saying Sproat's "nuclear project managerial experience should serve him well in his new position."

"We expect the project will continue to move forward in the licensing process under Ward Sproat's leadership," NEI spokeswoman Trish Conrad said.

Nevada officials who monitor the Yucca project said they knew little of the nominee.

Bob Loux, who coordinates the state's official opposition, said it matters little who directs Yucca Mountain day by day because it has support from the nuclear industry and higher-ups in the Bush administration.

"I think the die is cast relative to Yucca Mountain," Loux said, adding, "You can't alter the fact they have a bad site, and that is not going to change.

"On the other hand," Loux continued, "if he is coming at it from the experience of negotiating with DOE, maybe that is an indicator he is going to move the department to the direction of settling with the utilities."

The nomination will be considered by the Energy Committee before going to the Senate itself.

"Any nominee will face tough questions moving through the hearing process," said Tessa Hafen, spokeswoman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a repository critic who closely watches the project.

Stephens Washington Bureau writer Elizabeth Piet contributed to this report.