State losing more jobs in Yucca shutdown

State and local agencies will lose millions of dollars in oversight money and more than two dozen jobs if Congress follows through with the Obama administration's plan to zero out funding next year for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project.

In interviews this week, officials for agencies that have been tracking the project for more than 20 years said in some cases staffs will be reduced or eliminated if the Department of Energy funding for the project is lopped to nothing as called for in the president's budget.

Nye County's Nuclear Waste Repository Office would be the hardest hit among the affected local government agencies that receive DOE oversight money from the ratepayer-supported Nuclear Waste Fund.

Darrell Lacy, director of the Nye County office, said his agency currently receives about $4 million in oversight money in addition to $9 million that DOE provides Nye County as payment equal to taxes for hosting the Yucca Mountain site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

If funding stops after Sept. 30 at the end of the fiscal year, jobs for 13 Nye County employees and a dozen contractors would be lost.

"We'll end up assigning them to other county jobs or lay them off," Lacy said.

In addition, he said the county's program to monitor groundwater near Yucca Mountain and the Nevada Test Site would be affected.

"Geophysics and hydrogeology, all that will come to a halt," Lacy said.

"We hope in the short term there is funding for shutdown and a reclamation office. We would like to see a new mission for the Yucca Mountain site to help provide benefits for the county," he said.

Likewise, Clark County's Nuclear Waste Division stands to lose $1.8 million if DOE stops doling out oversight money.

"We won't actually know until Congress votes. If we are zeroed and funding is closed, we would have to close out the program," division spokesman Erik Muller said.

The division's staff of four, including planning manager Irene Navis, would likely be disbanded, he said.

Without some $400,000 in oversight money, White Pine County's Nuclear Waste Project Office would close and its director, Mike Simon, and two county employees would lose their jobs, the Ely Times reported Wednesday.

In all since 1989, 10 affected counties in Nevada and California have received nearly $120 million combined in oversight money.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has used his leverage as Senate majority leader to help kill the Yucca Mountain Project so that Nevada wouldn't be saddled with the risk of storing 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste in what he calls "the dump."

In an e-mail Wednesday, Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the senator has "worked hard over the years" to provide funds for Yucca oversight activities, even when the Bush administration was trying to cut them.

"Sen. Reid is sensitive to the fact that jobs are being lost, which is why he is working to find alternative uses for Yucca," Summers wrote.

In a letter to the Government Accountability Office last week, Reid suggested the site could be used for national security activities, development of renewable energy technology, science and arms control work.

Since 1983, the state of Nevada has received $97.6 million in oversight money, including nearly $5 million this year. Most of that was spent by the Agency for Nuclear Projects until this year when oversight funding shifted to the attorney general's office for supporting Yucca Mountain legal challenges.

The state's general fund finances the Agency for Nuclear Projects. The agency currently has four staff members, down from a peak of 22.

Bruce Breslow, the agency's executive director, said state budget reductions will cut the staff in half after July 1, leaving him and an administrative assistant.

"We plan to reduce general fund spending by our agency by up to 75 percent if the Department of Energy carries out its promise to withdraw the license application with prejudice," he said.

His goal is to cut the agency's funding from $1.7 million down to roughly $450,000.

Anticipating that DOE will soon withdraw its license application, Breslow has sent out cease-work letters to scientists and experts and has taken steps to end state-funded contracts that relate to the Yucca Mountain Project.

He said the agency's reduced mission would then be to focus on a site reclamation plan, the federal blue ribbon commission for charting a new nuclear waste course, and unwinding Nevada's Yucca-related lawsuits.

The agency will continue to monitor more than 1,000 low-level and transuranic waste shipments across Nevada and begin archiving 23 years worth of Yucca scientific studies. With the end of the Yucca Mountain Project in sight, the nuclear industry's lobby arm, the Nuclear Energy Institute, closed its Henderson office.

And, with licensing hearings on hold, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff wonders what will happen to the $4 million hearing facility the NRC leases in Las Vegas.

"I suspect it's too early to tell," NRC spokesman David McIntyre said in an e-mail.

The building on Pepper Lane was equipped three years ago with $1 million in high-tech video and audio gear and computer equipment specifically for the Yucca proceedings.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.