Bid to revive Yucca Mountain Project defeated in Senate

WASHINGTON -- A new bid to revive federal funding for the Yucca Mountain Project was defeated Thursday in Congress, as Democrats continued to hold the line against the out-of-favor nuclear waste plan.

At a Senate committee meeting, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., decried the Obama administration's planned termination of the Nevada waste storage site, arguing it would leave her state and others in a lurch with millions of gallons of liquid radioactive waste and tons of solid waste and no place to send it.

"The Obama administration made a serious mistake when it zeroed out the funding for Yucca Mountain," said Murray, whose state houses the Hanford nuclear reservation, which has become an issue in her re-election race.

But when Murray proposed adding $200 million for Yucca into an energy spending bill for next year, other Democrats on the Appropriations Committee voted her down, saying President Barack Obama has made it clear he does not want the site.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said adding money for Yucca Mountain "will do nothing to restart the program. It will not change the administration's policy or put Yucca back on track."

With the Department of Energy on its way to dismantling the project offices in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., "Yucca at this point is a project only on paper," Dorgan said.

The Senate committee voted 16-13 to kill the amendment, the latest of several failed efforts to keep the repository plan on life support while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a federal court in Washington, D.C., consider legal questions surrounding the shutdown.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have stuck by Obama, and by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has tried for years to kill the project.

Last week, Democrats on a House energy subcommittee defeated an amendment that would have restored
$100 million with instructions the Energy Department continue to pursue a construction license for a repository.

Pro-repository House lawmakers might mount another effort in the coming weeks, congressional officials said.

In a statement Thursday, Reid said he was happy the Senate appropriators "recognize that Yucca Mountain is dead and rejected an effort to bring it back to life. "

During debate, Democrats picked up an ally in Republican Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah. Bennett said he had voted for Yucca Mountain in the past but has changed his mind.

"I thought it made sense when I voted for it," he said. "Now I have come to the conclusion that Yucca Mountain was a mistake."

The idea to store nuclear spent fuel in a mountainside has become "obsolete," Bennett said, with technologies over the horizon that might extract more energy from the material before it would need to be discarded.

At that point, he said, he would be happy to send nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. But in the meantime, he said, "technology has caught up with us," and the project as envisioned should be set aside.