Nevadans in congress echo Miller on nuclear funding

Nevada's congressional delegation joined Gov. Bob Miller this week in urging the Legislature's Interim Finance Committee to fund a request for $1.8 million to help the state pay for scientific oversight of a proposed high-level nuclear dump.

Congress cut funding to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects in 1995 following an audit. Congressmen said they were concerned that nuclear waste funds had been used by the state to lobby against a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and froze $700,000 of the request.

The agency, responsible for overseeing the U.S. Department of Energy's study of the mountain located 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will close its doors in July without funding from the state.

"It is apparent to us that the decision to freeze remaining oversight funds represents a blatant attempt to silence the state of Nevada's oversight entity," Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., along with Reps. John Ensign and Jim Gibbons, both R.-Nev., wrote.

The funding comes from money collected from nuclear ratepayers provided under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

"The bipartisan support of Nevada's congressional delegation in Washington shows how important this issue is to Nevadans," Miller said, noting that Congress and the nuclear industry have been determined to place commercial radioactive waste in Nevada before all the scientific evidence has been collected.

The finance committee is expected to consider a $1.2 million request on June 25. The funds would allow state scientific research and environmental and transportation studies to continue through March, said agency director Bob Loux.

The DOE plans to report to Congress by the end of the year whether it has discovered any major scientific stumbling blocks at the mountain, which is being considered as a repository for 77,000 tons of the nation's highly radioactive waste.

Once the DOE produces its viability assessment, the federal agency will begin a formal Environmental Impact Statement for the project due by 2002.

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