Yucca's yearly price tag hits $7.4 billion

WASHINGTON -- Yucca Mountain project managers will spend $685,000 on travel this year, about $30 million developing a nuclear waste container designed to last 10,000 years and $235,000 to sponsor a scholarship program for black college students.

A review of the $352.5 million Yucca Mountain budget for fiscal year 2000 offers a look at how the U.S. Department of Energy is spending the money it gets from Congress to develop a tomb for the nation's nuclear waste.

An analysis also reveals a few interesting line items tucked into the budget's folds. Perhaps none is more interesting than the grand total: $7.4 billion in 1998 adjusted dollars has been spent on the controversial and ambitious waste storage project since its inception in 1983.

The Yucca Mountain repository will cost an estimated $43.6 billion before it is completed in 2116, according to DOE budget documents.

"Before the department makes a recommendation to the president, we need to know everything possible about whether and how Yucca Mountain could function as a repository," Ivan Itkin, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said in a press release. "Our current budget will allow us to continue the scientific and technical work that is necessary to do that."

Itkin's written statement was prepared by the DOE's communications office. DOE press officers said DOE employees who provided information for this story could not be identified.

While DOE officials say Yucca expenditures represent money well spent, a number of taxpayer and environmental groups oppose the spending. A coalition of critics next month will release the sixth "Green Scissors" report targeting what its members believe is wasteful government spending, including Yucca. Yucca has been on the list every year.

"For the DOE, when it comes to Yucca Mountain, ignorance is bliss," said Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an environmental and consumer group that co-authors the Green Scissors report. "When data show that their own (safety) guidelines could be violated, then they change the guidelines rather than disqualify the site."

Since 1983 the DOE has been analyzing Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, to determine whether it is safe to store all of the nation's nuclear waste -- eventually more than 77,000 tons of it -- inside the mountain.

The high-level radioactive waste now sits at nuclear power plants all over the nation. Trucks and trains could begin hauling the waste to Nevada as early as 2007, according to legislation pending in Congress.

Most of the money that pays for Yucca comes from the pockets of people who use electricity generated by nuclear power plants. Those ratepayers pay a utility tax into a Yucca fund, now at about $15 billion.

But taxpayers also pay for Yucca because the U.S. Department of Defense has produced high-level radioactive waste making weapons and powering nuclear sea vessels. Taxpayers have paid $1.2 billion so far and owe another $1.5 billion by 2010, DOE officials said.

Eventually, taxpayers will have paid for about 25 percent of the cost of Yucca because defense waste would be stored there.

The bulk of this year's Yucca budget, $256.5 million, will be directed to private contractors for ongoing studies inside the mountain, according to DOE officials.

For example, scientists are analyzing how intense heat produced by decaying nuclear waste affects the mountain rock. They are studying how water moves through the mountain and how vulnerable Yucca is to an earthquake or volcano.

In October, at the start of the new fiscal year, the DOE's Yucca payroll listed 19 contractors with 1,574 full-time employees, according to DOE documents.

That number had swelled to the equivalent of 1,947 full-time employees in September. That month marks the end of the fiscal year, when contractors pull employees from other projects and pay more overtime hours to meet deadlines on Yucca projects.

TRW Environmental Safety Systems holds the most lucrative contract: $56.5 million this year and $59.8 million next year, according to DOE officials. TRW is in charge of the engineering, design and management of Yucca projects. The company's 10-year contract was estimated to be close to $1 billion when it was signed in 1991.

Other top contractors include San Diego-based engineering and technology research firm Science Applications International Corp. ($33.7 million next year); Boise, Idaho-based construction firm Morrison-Knudsen Corp. ($18.2 million); Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke Engineering & Services, Inc. ($15.5 million); and University of California-managed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ($12.9 million).

Scientists at six laboratories around the nation are conducting research on metals to be used for nuclear waste containers. They have the unusual task of developing a cask that could safely hold nuclear waste at least 10,000 years.

Lynchburg, Va.-based Framatome Cogema Fuels now leads the effort, working closely with Lawrence Livermore. Engineers at Lawrence Livermore are studying how metal and alloy samples, some just 1 inch by 1 inch, stand up over time when exposed to varying temperatures, humidity and moisture levels.

Lawrence Livermore engineers now say a nickle, chrome and tungsten alloy called C-22 or "hastalloy" could last 10,000 years.

"It's our belief for this type of environment this is the best material available," said Al Lingenfelter, an engineer at Lawrence Livermore.

In the past two years Framatome officials have fabricated several mock-up sample carbon-steel containers. The test versions of the cylindrical "waste storage packages" are about 4 feet long, about 10 feet shorter than the actual containers will be. Both the mock-ups and the actual containers will be about 5 feet wide.

Framatome officials this spring and summer plan to fabricate a new test C-22 container. They also are developing a titanium "drip shield" that would be placed over the container to protect it from water inside the Yucca repository.

"These tests are being conducted by some of the best scientists in the United States," said Tom Coleman, Framatome vice president for government relations.

Some of the smaller Yucca expenditures are the most intriguing. One seems to have nothing to do with nuclear waste.

The Yucca budget includes $235,000 allocated for a scholarship program for 10 minority college students. The program grew from an executive order signed by former President George Bush that requires the federal government to support historically black colleges and universities.

So the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which manages Yucca, launched a scholarship program for 10 students a year. The goal is to propel more minority scientists into the work force. OCRWM offers the students $8,000 each for tuition and fees, plus a $600 a month stipend during the school year for a total of $134,000 a year.

The rest of the $235,000 goes to "administrative overhead costs," such as program recruiting, student orientation and application reviews, said a DOE program administrator who asked not to be identified.

Yucca managers also budget for travel: $685,000 next year. That's roughly a $3,500 average for each of the 196 full-time OCRWM employees, although the DOE doesn't keep a list of how many of them take trips each year, said DOE spokeswoman Gayle Fisher.

Yucca staffers travel between offices in Nevada and Washington and labs elsewhere and attend conferences, such as the International Conference on Geologic Repositories held in Denver in October.

Yucca managers also attend several overseas conferences, Fisher said. For example, Yucca policy advisor Abe Van Luik went to Paris for four days in October to deliver a Yucca briefing to a multinational conference.

Of course, part of the Yucca budget is allocated for salaries, including benefits and overtime: about $20 million for the 196 full-time employees. That's roughly a $102,000 average. DOE officials said it was difficult to calculate how much they spend on overtime.

DOE officials stressed that the employees are well paid because they are skilled professionals and doctorate-wielding specialists such as nuclear engineers and public-policy specialists.

DOE documents list 45 general engineers, two nuclear engineers, two nuclear industry specialists, 16 physical scientists and 38 program managers among those on the payroll.

Among the expenditures that were axed from this year's budget was a $1.9 million information exchange program between Yucca scientists and the engineers inside Krasnoyarsk-26 in Siberia. Yucca managers had to trim their budget after they requested $409 million this year, and Congress gave them only $352 million.

Krasnoyarsk-26 was a once-proud jewel of the former Soviet Union's nuclear empire. The city was built at the foot of a mountain hiding three nuclear reactors that spit out tons of plutonium for weapons of the Cold War. The nation's top scientists toiled in secrecy for decades inside the barbed wire confines of the remote, 7-square-mile city that Soviet leaders denied even existed.

These days Krasnoyarsk-26 is the victim of a crumbling economy: Only one reactor inside the mountain works, plant workers go unpaid and security is waning, according to recent news reports. But scientists there have first-hand knowledge of how nuclear waste affects a mountain.

"The Russians may not have seen it this way, but (Krasnoyarsk-26) has now become a good example of a reactor heating rock," said Fisher. She said Yucca officials would have spent the $1.9 million to collect Krasnoyarsk-26 records and write reports.

DOE budget officials pen the first draft of each year's Yucca budget. From there, the budget eventually becomes part of the president's budget request. The Yucca budget is part of the DOE's budget, which is a part of the mind-numbing 3,000-page Fiscal Energy and Water Appropriations bill.

An excerpt:

"Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations require numerical predictions of the effectiveness of the multiple barrier concept to mitigate a potential release to the natural environment and minimize radionuclides transport to potential human receptors." (From page 1,488 of the House Fiscal Year 2000 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.)

In other words, scientists need money to test whether stored nuclear waste might leak and harm people.

It's then up to Congress to approve the appropriations bill. Few elected representatives or senators actually study the reams of budget documents for Yucca in any detail, DOE officials say. Congressional aides do most of the in-depth review each year between February and June or July.

"It's more than a cursory review, I can tell you that," said the DOE financial officer. "They ask many good questions."

The House and Senate then haggle over bottom lines and eventually agree on a final allocation. This year the House had approved $281 million for Yucca; the Senate approved $355. A special committee of the two houses settled on the final $352.5 million.

The budget process for next year already is under way. The DOE plans to ask for $386 million for Yucca for 2001, according to DOE documents.

According to budget projections, the Yucca project will need between $600 million and $1 billion a year between 2005 and 2040. The budget then quickly levels off to about $50 million a year until 2116 when the project is complete.

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