Lawmakers told Yucca project is limping

The head of the state agency fighting federal efforts to open a high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Southern Nevada told legislators Tuesday the dump faces many obstacles and may already be dead.

"The project is limping along," said Robert Loux, executive director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects. "We believe the project is dead."

Loux cited the 50 percent reduction in the Energy Department's latest budget request for the nuclear-waste project, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as evidence that the government and President Bush may lack confidence in the project.

The DOE last year said it would need $1.3 billion in the coming year for costs associated with pushing the project forward. But now it's asking Congress for just $651 million for the coming year. The department requested $880 million for the current fiscal year and got $577 million.

"It looks to us and others that the project may never rekindle and get started again," Loux said.

Allen Benson, DOE spokesman, said the project is moving forward and the 5,000-plus page license document is on schedule to be submitted by the end of the year.

"We're working on the license application," he said. "We are working on the licensing support network. We are proceeding ahead."

Besides the scientific obstacles the project faces, Loux said there are regulatory obstacles. They include a Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirement that all documents related to the project be made part of an electronic database, and a federal court ruling that calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to redraft protection standards and for the NRC to change its licensing rules.

The Energy Department's top manager for nuclear waste disposal said Monday that Yucca Mountain will come on line at least two years later than its planned 2010 opening. Benson said the new 2012 date "is predicated on getting the budget we need and resolution of the EPA standard."

"I don't think anyone really believes 2012, either," Loux said, adding that he thinks a license application for the project will not be submitted by November as the DOE originally projected.

"The more they set these deadlines that don't then get met, there's a real loss of confidence by everyone who oversees the project," he said.

Still, Loux asked the Legislature for $2 million in state money for each of the next two years to pay for the state's legal fight against the project.

A combination of federal and state funds would give the state more than $5 million to both continue to fight the proposed high-level waste facility and participate in its licensing should it reach that point.