The already scaled back federal funding to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain would drop by close to $100 million more through the rest of fiscal 2009, continuing a steep downward spiral that raises new questions about the future of the project. The annual spending level of $288.4 million would be a record low or close to it for the 26-year-old nuclear project, Energy Department managers said.
DOE officials have adapted to shrinking budgets in recent years through layoffs and by revising Yucca work plans. The agency filed for a repository construction license last summer. Project managers have not indicated what would be the ultimate tipping point below which it might not be possible to sustain the effort.
For Yucca Mountain, the new budget would be $98 million less than what the Department of Energy is being given now under the stopgap bill, and more than $200 million less than the Bush administration requested early in 2008.
With President Barack Obama also having come out against Yucca Mountain, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev has stepped up his activity and his rhetoric against the project. He has said the reductions in the upcoming spending bill would be only the first step, and that Obama’s budget for 2010 would contain “little if anything” to keep the project going.
– from lvrj. 28 Jan 2009