WASHINGTON -- Plans to begin storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain by March 2017 should be able to proceed without legislation from Congress, a key Energy Department official said Wednesday.
Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told a group of nuclear power executives the department will submit a license application for Yucca Mountain to the National Regulatory Commission no later than June 30, 2008.
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"That's no ifs, ands or buts," said Sproat, who began running the program last June. "We have a firm stick in the sand about when this thing is going to go in."
After his remarks at the annual seminar sponsored by the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, Sproat was asked if he was concerned that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may derail legislation to keep the Yucca Mountain Project on schedule.
"Those strategic goals I laid out there don't require any additional legislation," Sproat said.
Reid is not convinced.
"That's wishful thinking on his part," said Reid, who has vowed to use his power as majority leader to slash funding for Yucca Mountain and block efforts to develop the repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
In November, Sproat told the National Academy of Sciences that Yucca Mountain should begin storing nuclear waste by March 2017, but later acknowledged lawsuits by Nevada probably would delay the schedule by at least three years. On Thursday, Sproat did not mention the possibility of delays.
Sproat said the department plans to begin rail construction in Nevada for Yucca Mountain in October 2009 and make the rail line operational by June 2014.
"Transportation is very complex," Sproat said. "We need to get the rail line started wherever it's going to be in Nevada."
During peak construction of the Yucca Mountain Project, which should last four to six years, the department will need to spend about $2 billion per year, Sproat said.
In recent years, Congress has approved budgets for Yucca Mountain ranging from $450 million to $500 million, and Reid has described those figures as too high.
Although he said he would not need legislation to meet schedule demands, Sproat said he will ask Congress to allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to determine Yucca Mountain's capacity for nuclear waste storage.
Current law sets the capacity at 77,000 tons, an amount Sproat called "artificially low."
Within the next two years, Sproat said, he also will ask Congress to approve a second nuclear waste repository.
He did not say where a second repository would be located.
