Obama budget confirms end of Yucca Mountain project

WASHINGTON -- On Valentine's Day 2002, then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended that Yucca Mountain in Nevada be excavated for tunnels that would store 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste. President George W. Bush signed off two days later.

But over the next nine years, the project sputtered, and the political winds changed. On Monday, Valentine's Day 2011, President Barack Obama proposed what officials said could be the final zeroing-out of the long-controversial repository program.

The plan must be cleared by Congress, where indications are there will be a fight. But the Obama administration budget released Monday suggests the government could be out of the Yucca Mountain business entirely by October.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will seek no money in fiscal 2012 from the fund dedicated to the proposed nuclear waste repository, according to the agency's budget plan.

Commission staff in October began to close out its adjudicatory review of the project after a directive from top agency officials.

According to new agency documents, the closeout "will be complete prior to fy2012," which starts Oct. 1.

"The budget assumes we will have an orderly closeout of the Yucca Mountain high-level repository reviews, and so there are no resources from the nuclear waste fund in our budget," said James Dyer, the commission's chief financial officer.

"The intention of this (budget) is to wrap things up by Sept. 30," added David McIntyre, commission spokesman.

Elsewhere, as the Obama administration rolled out its proposed 2012 budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget reported that other vestiges of the Yucca project have faded.

The project's management office within the Department of Energy was closed last year, and activities on nuclear waste management "are now being performed elsewhere" in the department, the Office of Management and Budget said in budget paperwork.

"There is no Yucca language in the budget," said David Cherry, a spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "This is welcome news to Nevadans who have been awaiting the end of the Yucca Mountain program."

Obama's secretary of energy, Steven Chu, repeated the administration's policy to develop alternatives to Yucca Mountain.

In a letter Friday to members of a high-level nuclear waste commission, Chu said the Yucca project "produced years of continued acrimony, dispute and uncertainty."

"The only way to open the path toward a successful nuclear future for the United States was to turn the page and look for a better solution." Chu said, adding the new effort needs to include buy-in from a host state and local communities, which never took place in Nevada.

But as the Obama administration continues to wind down the Yucca project, critics of the move are ramping up to keep it on life support.

Republican leaders in the U.S. House inserted a provision into a spending bill to be debated this week that forbids the regulatory commission from putting its work in mothballs. The bill, which was unveiled late Friday, prompted a reaction from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"Let me be clear," Reid said. "Any attempt to restart the Yucca Mountain project will not happen on my watch as Senate majority leader."

On Monday, Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., urged Republican party leaders to give up on the project, which most Nevadans oppose.

"Yucca Mountain as a storage location for the nation's nuclear waste is dead," Heller said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other Republicans who have spoken out in favor of keeping the project alive.

Obama administration critics say that killing the Yucca Mountain plan would be a waste of 20 years and $10 billion already spent and that Congress should have the final word on its fate.

In his letter, Heller noted that the cost to build a nuclear waste repository at the Nevada site would be nearly $100 billion, which is unacceptable in the current economy.

"I continue to be disappointed at the House's insistence of reviving the Yucca Mountain boondoggle," Heller said.

There was no comment from freshman Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., who in last fall's campaign said that the disposal site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas might be repurposed as a nuclear waste laboratory.

Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.