Yucca Mountain News Clips<br>
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
---------------------------
Las Vegas Sun
April 08, 2003
Nevada officials say DOE withholding Yucca oversight funds
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada officials are complaining that the federal agency planning to build a nuclear waste dump in the state is withholding money that Congress allocated to help monitor the process.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Bob Loux, the top state administrator fighting the dump, said the federal Energy Department is keeping part of the $2.5 million it allocated for the state and nearby counties in 2002 and $9.5 million allocated for 2003.
"Cutting off ... funds doesn't fill me with hope that you care about what is going on in Nevada," Reid said in a letter to Yucca Mountain project director Margaret Chu.
Loux, in a letter to the Energy Department called the withholding "arbitrary."
Energy Department officials told state and county officials they were keeping some of the money pending an audit of whether Nevada and the counties were improperly using the money to lobby against the project.
The department also was reviewing whether the state and counties still need the oversight money after approval for Yucca Mountain by Congress and President Bush last year, Chu said.
"I'm not saying I'm not going to fund them," Chu said after testifying Monday before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water projects in Washington, D.C.
State officials say the state, eight Nevada counties and nearby Inyo County, Calif., rely on the money to pay for independent analysis of Energy Department studies at Yucca Mountain.
Nye County Commissioner Henry Neth said his county, home to the repository, used part of its money for a "community protection plan" that did not break any rules.
Les Bradshaw, Nye County manager of natural resources and federal facilities, said about $1 million in Nye spending was questioned by DOE auditors, and about $1.1 million in county funding had been withheld.
"We have been scrupulous in how we spend oversight money," Bradshaw said.
Chu said department officials were reviewing how the oversight money should be used while the department applies to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to operate the Yucca Mountain site.
Energy Department plans call for entombing 77,000 tons of radioactive commercial, industrial and military waste beneath a desert ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The site is expected to remain radioactive for more than 10,000 years.
Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the state is entitled to the oversight money, regardless of whether the project is in a research or licensing phase.
He said Energy Department auditors were challenging $25,753 Nevada paid to technical adviser Steve Frishman, who made presentations to out-of-state groups about Nevada's opposition to the Yucca Mountain Project.
Chu told the Senate lawmakers that the Energy Department needs $591 million in the 2004 fiscal year to submit a Yucca license application on time, and called the next 12 to 18 months "extremely critical to the viability of the program."
She said the department was on track to apply for a Yucca construction license by December 2004, although some lower-ranking project officials have said the application won't be submitted until 2005.
Reid noted that the General Accounting Office was skeptical that the 2004 deadline could be met, and asked Chu how she planned to submit the license application without a comprehensive waste-shipping plan, which has been delayed.
Chu said the license application can proceed without the transportation plan.
---------------------------
Las Vegas Review Journal
April 09, 2003
Top Yucca manager urges full allocation
Licensing application in jeopardy, Chu tells Senate panel; Reid to fight for funding cuts
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department's top nuclear waste repository manager renewed calls this week for full funding of the Yucca Mountain Project, but the program's chief critic in Congress signaled he again will stand in the way.
At a Senate budget hearing Monday, Margaret Chu emphasized that the Energy Department will need Congress to allocate all of the $591 million requested this year if there is any hope to complete a license application for a nuclear waste repository at the Nevada site by December 2004.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must approve the license application before construction can formally begin on a repository.
"I hope we get full funding," said Chu, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "The next 12 to 18 months is extremely critical."
While Chu received supportive remarks from several senators, the program received poor grades from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a leader of efforts to stop or delay the nuclear waste project.
Confirmed to her job 13 months ago, Chu on Monday made her first appearance before the Senate's energy and water spending panel and Reid, its ranking Democrat.
Given the Yucca Mountain Project's continuing financial and technical challenges, "It strikes me as somewhat unlikely" that the Energy Department can meet a 2004 license application goal even if Congress granted full funding, Reid said. A 2001 congressional audit concluded that 2006 would be a more realistic goal, he noted.
"Even if you do file an application on time, your supporters are going to wonder how you were able to get everything done correctly and properly given that Congress has not been granting your budget requests for more than a decade," Reid said. "And all of us will want to know what you did wrong or not at all."
Reid also criticized the Energy Department for not planning to have a national nuclear waste transportation plan in place by the time of its license application for the planned repository, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Chu responded that persistent budget setbacks in Congress have caused Yucca managers to rework the program, delaying transportation segments so that work could concentrate on license preparation.
Even then, she said, a $134 million cutback in 2003 spending "forced us to reduce, eliminate and defer some of the work we have planned, significantly increasing the risk of not meeting the goal."
She said the Energy Department was completing a new analysis of the program amid reports that it is considering delaying the license application or revising key elements of the program for cost savings.
Reid has played roles in decreasing Energy Department nuclear waste budget requests for the past nine years in Congress. On Tuesday, his spokeswoman, Tessa Hafen, said he "will actively work to cut the budget this year, just as he has in years past."
---------------------------
Las Vegas Sun
April 09, 2003
Editorial: No reason for delay of money
LAS VEGAS SUN
President Bush and Congress have already written off the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as a lost world fit only for the storage of nuclear waste. But Nevada and its counties are not meekly acquiescing to this assessment. For more than 20 years, our state and local governments have fought against the plan to convert Yucca Mountain into a burial site for lethal waste from the nation's nuclear power plants. And with critical stages in the planning for Yucca just ahead, they have no plans to wilt now. That's why a Department of Energy decision to withhold money from Nevada and Clark County is inexcusable.
Because Nevada and its counties would be so extremely affected by the Yucca Mountain decision, Congress authorized annual stipends that would enable local officials to conduct independent studies of the site, review the federal studies and keep the public informed of their findings. For this year, the state was to receive $2.5 million and Clark County another $1.8 million. Additionally, $5.2 million was approved for eight other Nevada counties and Inyo County in California. The annual allocations are included in the Department of Energy's budget, but were clearly intended to be fully passed on to the state and counties.
The DOE, however, is holding up this year's funds for the state and Clark County, plus another $625,000 the state was to have received last year. One reason is that an audit is under way to see if past disbursements were spent properly. Another reason was given by Margaret Chu, director of the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. On Monday, she told the Sun's Washington correspondent, Benjamin Grove, that the DOE is studying whether Nevada still needs the money, now that Congress has approved the Yucca Mountain site.
The DOE should not be overriding the intent of Congress in authorizing the money. Beyond that, of course, is the incontrovertible fact that the need for the money exists as much now as ever. The DOE needs oversight as it prepares a plan for transporting nuclear waste across the country and through Southern Nevada. And it needs oversight as it seeks licenses before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- one for constructing the site at Yucca and another for actually depositing the waste underneath. As for the audit reason, that amounts to penalizing the state -- at a critical juncture -- for no discernible reason. The DOE has not produced any evidence of misspent money. Unless it does, the money should flow as Congress intended.
---------------------------
State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
---------------------------