Reid wants to help displaced Yucca workers find new jobs

WASHINGTON -- After promoting a deep budget cut to the Yucca Mountain Project that will push hundreds of Nevadans out of work, Sen. Harry Reid said he wants to cushion the blow.

Reid said helping laid off Yucca workers find new jobs will be a priority in 2008. Most of them are losing their old jobs after the Senate majority leader arranged for a $108 million slash through the Department of Energy nuclear waste program.

The job losses raise a potentially awkward situation for Reid and other Nevada leaders who have pledged to do whatever is necessary to kill the government's plan to bury highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel in the state.

Caught in the crossfire are roughly 1,500 Nevadans who collect paychecks from the Energy Department or its Yucca contractors. It is unusual for elected officials to seek the demise of a federal program that employs so many constituents.

Reid said Wednesday that he is taking steps to form a worker transition strategy as he continues to cut away at the project. The strategy also would cover workers at the Nevada Test Site.

"My staff and I are looking at all options," Reid said. "Killing Yucca is good news for Nevada, but the people who work there have families to feed, and I want to make sure they can do that.

"We're talking to the Energy Department, test site officials, and leaders in the community to come up with ways to ensure that people who have lost their jobs at Yucca can find other jobs, and mitigate the number of layoffs at the test site as a whole," Reid said.

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the effort "is in the fairly early stages."

Reid aides and Energy Department officials were scheduled to meet today to discuss the impact of the budget cuts in the state.

"We are talking to DOE to get a better idea of the types of workers who are facing layoffs," Summers said. Reid also will meet with labor organizations to assess where new jobs might be found.

Reid similarly is monitoring the test site labor situation where about 200 positions were lost in the fall to cuts in the National Nuclear Security Administration, aides said. About half the Nevada reductions were attained through attrition and early retirements.

But Reid is paying particularly close attention to the workers who will lose their jobs at Yucca Mountain "since he is the one who is responsible for cutting so much funding," said a Senate aide familiar with the issue.

Reid and others who have fought Yucca Mountain for years justify their efforts. They say a nuclear waste repository could pose catastrophic health and safety threats to Nevadans and along shipping routes in other parts of the country. DOE officials maintain the program would be safe.

For the workers, the timing of layoffs is not great. They are being let go into the teeth of an economic downturn. Nevada's unemployment rate was 5.8 percent in December, the highest in more than five years and higher than the 5 percent national average.

In neighboring California, the jobless rate was 6.1 percent in December.

Bechtel SAIC Co., the Energy Department's managing contractor at Yucca Mountain, announced earlier this month it was laying off 63 workers. They include 27 union metalworkers, electricians, miners and pipefitters, and 36 people in administrative, environmental safety and health and property management positions.

The contractor, a partnership of two large engineering companies, is trying to place workers in divisions outside the state, spokesman Jason Bohne said.

"The people getting laid off are highly educated and highly skilled," Bohne said. "There is market demand for people willing to relocate. But some of these people are tied to Nevada and want to live in Nevada."

Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told a Nevada legislative committee last week that at least 500 people would be removed form the program in the next few months.

Most will be from Nevada, while others are employed in New Mexico by Sandia National Laboratories, another contractor.

Sproat said the Yucca program staffs about 2,400 full-time positions.

He said work toward a nuclear waste repository license would continue but at a reduced level of activity and under new schedules that have not yet been formed.

It was expected the estimated 22 percent budget cut would force more delays in the program already more than a decade behind schedule.

Gary Hollis, a Nye County commissioner who is supportive of the project, said he welcomed Reid's effort but wondered if Reid thought ahead when he took the axe to Yucca.

"I really hope that Senator Reid thought about this when he cut the funding, maybe he didn't," Hollis said. "I knew if we cut the program by $100 million that we wouldn't be able to keep the place open and work on the license at the same time."

Reid has suggested that Yucca workers, who include skilled technicians and engineers, could find new homes in the growing renewable energy field in Nevada.

Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association, said his member companies are hiring.

"Everyone knows two or three companies advertising for skilled positions as well as lower skilled construction and trade jobs," Gawell said. "In Nevada right now you have a great resource and a lot of state support and a lot of federal support."

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