Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Reid writes obit for Yucca, pointing to new Obama vow

Yucca compared to horror-show zombie that will not die

Yucca Mountain

The U.S. Energy Department plans to store spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, an extinct volcano about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Launch slideshow »
Harry Reid

Harry Reid

Sun Topics

The head of the Nevada agency fighting the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump likes to compare it to a horror-show zombie that will not die.

The Yucca Mountain project has seen its funding slashed, its science dismissed, its support dwindle. Still it lives on.

But on Thursday, the project 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas suffered its strongest blow yet.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the White House and its energy secretary have agreed to provide no funding in next year’s budget to pursue the project’s license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The agreement Reid reached with the White House is perhaps the most significant move to stop the project in the more than 20 years since the site was targeted by Congress and the nuclear industry as a place to bury highly radioactive fuel rods used at nuclear power plants.

If the president declines to fund the application process when he unveils his fiscal 2011 budget early next year, the Energy Department would not be able to continue the review, essentially halting decades of effort.

“Withdrawing the funds certainly stops it in its tracks,” said Bruce Breslow, executive director of Nevada’s Nuclear Projects Agency, which is fighting the project. “Cutting off the money is like chopping its legs off. It can’t move.”

President Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail to stop the dump if he was elected. He won Nevada, traditionally a swing state, by a wide margin.

Obama and Reid have since formed a working relationship as the president relies on the top Democrat to help usher his agenda through Congress — and Reid has been in talks with the administration to end the Yucca Mountain project.

Obama’s first budget severely reduced Yucca Mountain’s funding and included his intent to “terminate” the project.

Obama offered $196.8 million for Yucca Mountain — a fraction of what the Energy Department needs to develop the dump and a clear signal that Yucca’s days were numbered.

Yet the project’s foes remained skeptical, because Obama was allowing its license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to proceed, a process that can take up to four years.

As long as the license application continues, opponents worried, the dump was not truly dead. What would stop a future president from opening the dump?

Obama’s energy secretary, Nobel laureate Steven Chu, didn’t calm concerns.

Chu suggested that allowing the licensing process to play itself out would have scientific value if and when another geological repository is proposed for storing nuclear waste.

Observers also thought the administration was biding time so as not to trigger more lawsuits from the utility companies. The utilities have sued the federal government for its failure to open Yucca Mountain in 1998, as promised, and the government has amassed damages of more than $7 billion and climbing.

On Wednesday, as the Senate was working its way through votes on the fiscal 2010 appropriations bill for the Energy Department and related agencies, Reid was on the phone with Chu and the White House.

The administration relayed its intent to significantly reduce funding for the next fiscal year.

On Thursday Reid announced the administration had agreed to cut off in 2011 all funding to pursue the license application. The only money made available would be to conclude the work, bringing the project to a close, he said.

“This is a major victory for Nevada,” Reid said in a statement. “I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain project.

“I look forward to continuing my work with the president and his administration to find responsible, alternative solutions for dealing with nuclear waste,” Reid said.

Reid is up for reelection in 2010, and the ability to trumpet such a major blow to a project that many Nevadans oppose would be a significant campaign coup.

The fiscal 2011 budget would likely be announced early next year and would be making its way through Congress next summer, as election season is under way.

Administration officials confirmed this week’s talks.

“The president opposes the Yucca Mountain project, and that is reflected in the FY 2010 budget and will be again in the FY 2011 budget,” a White House spokesman said.

The administration is assembling a panel of experts to recommend alternatives to the Nevada site, and the “Department of Energy will be making an announcement soon on the formation of the Blue Ribbon Commission,” an agency spokeswoman said.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the main industry lobby, was not pleased, and hinted at additional legal action from the utilities.

“Budget decisions that, in effect, significantly delay the repository program are counter to current policy and would result in the government defaulting on contracts with utilities at a cost of billions of dollars to taxpayers,” institute spokesman John Keeley said.

But longtime dump foe Rep. Shelley Berkeley, a Democrat, welcomed the news. “With this announcement, we are closer than ever before to eliminating this threat to the very future of Las Vegas.”

Yet Yucca is not over until it’s over.

The law passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2002 — naming Yucca Mountain as the chosen site for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel — remains on the books.

Overturning that law may prove daunting, as even congressional allies of Reid and Obama represent states with nuclear power plants that want to get rid of the waste.

Shy of overturning the law, two other avenues remain for killing the dump plan.

Under the law, the energy secretary has the authority to withdraw the license application from the queue — a move the Obama campaign said last year it would make if he became president.

The energy secretary also has the authority to declare the Yucca Mountain site unsuitable, which would withdraw it from consideration.

Until these happen, or the law is overturned, Breslow said, Yucca still lives.

“We’re hoping that Secretary Chu will withdraw the license application and declare the site unsuitable based on all of the technical findings that Nevada has proved over the years,” Breslow said.

“The day that the license application gets withdrawn and the site is declared unsuitable by the energy secretary is the day I finally let out a deep breath.”

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