WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is revising costs to build a Yucca Mountain repository after a redesign that was initiated last fall and a new campaign that links the waste site to other ambitious nuclear initiatives.

DOE Deputy Secretary Clay Sell said Thursday that he had ordered a re-evaluation from the $57.6 billion that was the department's most recent published cost estimate for the nuclear waste repository, issued in May 2001.

Repository project manager Paul Golan said new estimates might emerge later this year, after DOE selects new designs for spent fuel canisters and for the industrial complex at Yucca Mountain where nuclear waste would arrive for placement.

Speaking with reporters after an appearance on Capitol Hill, Sell suggested repository costs would decrease upon review. Officials said last fall that new designs for the above-ground complex would eliminate several "multibillion-dollar" fuel-handling facilities.

There also has been growing speculation among industry and congressional officials that DOE plans further changes at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as part of a new waste reprocessing initiative called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

The Bush administration is preparing a Yucca Mountain bill expected to be introduced in Congress in the coming days that could provide clues. Sell said some details of how the repository might relate to the reprocessing initiative remained undetermined.

Golan said he was not told he must find specific savings within the Yucca project.