New bid to keep Yucca alive as lawmakers debate shutdown

WASHINGTON -- A House panel is launching a new but scaled-back bid to keep alive the Yucca Mountain Project, which the Obama administration is moving to terminate by the end of September.

A 2012 energy spending bill being formed by the House Appropriations Committee contains $35 million for the Nevada nuclear waste program, which has been largely shut down except for work being wrapped up at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

For a project that had been reduced over time from budgets of well more than $400 million, the latest funding being set aside is a nominal amount that one supportive lawmaker, Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, described as a symbolic figure.

The new bill, posted Wednesday on the House committee's website, also contains a directive for the NRC to halt its shutdown work. Similar legislation was killed in Congress this year by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The proposal came as House lawmakers were told by federal auditors at a hearing Wednesday that the nation's policy for managing nuclear waste is up in the air and is becoming "more pressing day by day" after the dismantling of the Yucca project.

That assessment drew a mixed reaction as the hearing yielded a fresh round of recriminations over the Obama administration's policy shift. It shelved the underground storage and eventual burial of spent nuclear fuel in Nevada in favor of new but as yet undetermined paths being considered by a high-level study commission.

Republicans and some Democrats on the environment and the economy subcommittee decried the decision to abandon what had been the government's nuclear waste strategy for more than 25 years and what has cost $15 billion.

Ending the program "is the cherry on top of a mismanaged federal exercise," said Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C.

Administration critics revived allegations, now being heard in federal court, that President Barack Obama violated the law by terminating the program without permission from Congress.

They also said they rejected Energy Secretary Steven Chu's rationale that the Yucca project could be scrapped for lack of public acceptance in Nevada. They said Obama promised Reid in 2008 that he would kill the project, which is unpopular with most state residents.

Nye County Commission Chairman Gary Hollis was invited by Republicans to testify that the Yucca Mountain program enjoys support among the people who live closest to the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Hollis said the NRC should be allowed to finish its review of the Yucca site, a step the Department of Energy is seeking to withdraw from the agency's docket.

But others said ditching Yucca Mountain presents an opportunity for the government to find better solutions.

Pete Lyons, a native Nevadan who is assistant secretary of nuclear energy at the Department of Energy, said there was a chance the Yucca site could never be opened given the determined opposition from within the state.

"I watched for many years as Nevada representatives blocked each of the (Yucca) initiatives," Lyons said. "In my view, there are many, many steps that remain before Yucca Mountain could ever be opened."

"Let's get right to the point," testified Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., "Nevadans have been saying no to Yucca Mountain for decades. And we will continue shouting no at the top of our lungs until this effort to shove nuclear waste down our throats is ended."