Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

House group pushes for full Yucca funding

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is pressuring House appropriators to give the Energy Department the full $591 million it requested for Yucca Mountain next year.

The department has been frustrated in past years as Congress cut its Yucca budget. Now the proposed nuclear waste repository is in a crucial phase of development, and department officials say they need the $591 million to avoid project delays.

Congress and President Bush last year approved the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as the best place to store the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste, which for decades has been piling up at power plants and U.S. defense sites nationwide.

The department needs the money to finish a complex application for a Yucca license by next year and to continue plans to construct and ship waste to Nevada, department officials say. The department is scrambling to stay on a schedule that would allow the repository to open by 2010.

"We believe there is a broad bipartisan group in both the House and the Senate that obviously supports Yucca Mountain," department spokesman Joe Davis said. "We believe it should be fully funded and, if it's not, we'll be disappointed."

In a letter signed by 23 Republicans and nine Democrats, the House lawmakers urged two key members of the House Appropriations Committee to fully fund the project. In addition, the lawmakers requested that the $134 million that was cut from the Yucca budget last year be restored.

Designing and constructing Yucca "represents a strong first step toward addressing the problem of safely storing spent reactor fuel and high-level radioactive wastes" the June 13 letter to Rep. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., and Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, said.

"Further, resolving this nuclear waste issue is a critical component in securing our long-term energy future," the letter said.

The House is more likely than the Senate to approve the full $591 million. The department has not received its full budget request for Yucca in past years largely because of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Reid quietly negotiates to reduce the funding.

Nevada lawmakers said they expect the budget process to follow a similar pattern this year.

Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said they planned to circulate letters of their own to House colleagues urging Yucca budget cuts.

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