US nuclear industry worries over repository funds

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Monday July 19, 6:46 pm Eastern Time

US nuclear industry worries over repository funds

WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters) - A top nuclear industry official 
expressed concern on Monday that a congressional spending committee 
has not budgeted enough money to continue development of a massive 
nuclear waste repository in Nevada.  

Joe Colvin, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear 
Energy Institute, asked the heads of the House Appropriations 
Committee to fund the Department of Energy waste site program at the 
$409 million level requested by the Clinton administration for fiscal 
year 2000.  

Plans call for the DOE to continue studying Yucca Mountain, Nevada -- 
located around 90 miles from Las Vegas -- as the possible permanent 
home to the nation's radioactive waste.  

Currently, around 38,000 tons (344,700 kg) of spent fuel rods are 
stored at U.S. reactor sites.

An appropriations subcommittee last week approved only $281 million 
for next fiscal year. Some $169 million of that amount would come 
from the Nuclear Waste Fund fees paid by nuclear utility consumers 
and $112 million from a defense account.  

``If funding is not provided at the amount requested by the 
Department of Energy, Congress will extend a disturbing pattern of 
siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars paid by consumers each year 
specifically for this program to fund unrelated government 
programs,'' Colvin said in his letters to lawmakers.  

The letter was sent to House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young, a 
Republican from Florida, and to the ranking Democrat on the panel, 
Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin.  

The nuclear industry has long been at odds with the government on how 
nuclear waste fees are spent. Colvin noted that electricity consumers 
will pay $630 million in fiscal 2000 to the Nuclear Waste Fund, more 
than four times the amount appropriated by the subcommittee from that 
fund.  

Nuclear utilities want the waste moved, as the law states, to a 
permanent site. Legislation pending in Congress seeks to have DOE 
take control of the waste at reactor sites, and end years of legal 
wrangling with utilities and states who want the spent fuel 
relocated.  

Still, problems exist with compromise legislation in the Senate. The 
White House wants the Environmental Protection Agency to set 
radiation regulations at Yucca Mountain, while Republican leaders 
have a bill authorizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to set 
limits.  

EPA standards on allowable radiation exposure limits are considered 
more rigorous by the White House and environmentalists.

A DOE spokesman said the agency hopes shortfalls in their fiscal 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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