From Energy Daily November 9, 2009

fiscal 2011 4all of it aimed at closing the project.<br><br> The draft budget, dated October 23, would set aside half those funds for carchiving d project data and the rest for ctransitioning d workers out of the Nevada site. More immediately significant is DOE 9s plan to abandon its license application for Yucca. cAll license defense activities will be terminated in December 2009, d says the budget request.<br><br> That means DOE would stop responding to NRC staff questions about technical aspects of the giant application, virtually guaranteeing that NRC could not approve it. For supporters of Yucca, continued progress at NRC has represented the best remaining hope that the project might survive. Although the Obama administration has said for months that it plans to develop a different option for managing U.S.<br><br> nuclear waste, Chu has maintained that DOE should continue work on Yucca application to better understand NRC 9s criteria for a potential future disposal site. More significantly, knowledgeable sources believe DOE has continued work on the Yucca license largely to forestall lawsuits from U.S. nuclear utilities, who might otherwise allege that DOE was violating the Nuclear Waste Policy Act which, as amended, generally directs DOE to develop Yucca.<br><br> But another source said Friday that it would be cdifficult to charge DOE was doing anything illegal d if it did not request or get any money for continued development of Yucca. Asked Friday about DOE 9s plan to end work on the Yucca application, and whether DOE thought it would expose them to any legal challenges, Energy Department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller said only that cthe administration 9s position on Yucca Mountain has not changed. cThe president and Secretary Chu have made it clear that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period.<br><br> The 2010 budget clearly reflects the president 9s commitment to moving beyond Yucca Mountain and developing a long- term waste management solution. d While DOE 9s fiscal 2010 budget includes $149 million for Yucca, the draft fiscal 2011 budget sets a ctarget d request of $46.2 million, cof which [$21.2 million] shall support site remediation and worker transition and [$25 million] shall support archiving of data associated with the Yucca Mountain Program. d Attached to the draft budget request is a memo from DOE Chief Financial Officer Steve Isakowitz to DOE budget officers. In the memo, Isakowitz said the budget request had recently been submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget. He says Chu has not given final approvals to the budget decisions, but that cwe do not expect the information to change. d Utilities have already won nearly $600 million in court awards from DOE stemming from the department 9s failure begin disposing of the utilities 9 spent fuel in Yucca beginning in 1998, a date the two sides agreed upon in a set of 1983 contracts.<br><br> Several sources said Friday that it was unclear how DOE 9s abandonment of the Yucca license application might affect those cases, if at all. However, other sources say that if DOE abandons the Yucca Mountain license application, it will have an increasingly difficult time justifying continuing collecting fees from ratepayers for the so-called Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF). The NWF is legally intended for use in developing a national spent fuel repository, but lawmakers have routinely used the money for other purposes, to the ire of nuclear utilities and state utility commissioners.<br><br> Both groups have increased calls for DOE to halt collection of the fees since the administration announced plans to end the Yucca project earlier this year, arguing it was unjustifiable to continue collecting money for a project that was ending. And one source said DOE 9s ending of license application work at NRC could fuel that argument. That move DOE would amplify the cquestion as to whether DOE can rightfully continue to collect fees of more than $700 million per year if there were no program, d the source said Friday.<br><br> cAnd I think industry would really push on that. d Sources say DOE also might face tough questions from congressional appropriators if it abandons the Yucca license next month. One source said appropriators may think the agency is improperly creprogramming d money if it uses fiscal 2010 appropriations intended for work on the Yucca license for other purposes. More broadly, many Republicans and some moderate Democrats 4particularly in the House 4are generally unhappy with the Obama administration 9s decision to end Yucca.<br><br> Many think the decision to kill Yucca was aimed at fulfilling a political promise that Obama made to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) 4an ardent Yucca foe 4when Obama was running for president and needed Reid 9s support. Chu, however, says Yucca is poor disposal site, that relevant science has improved since the site was picked in the 1980s and that the nation can find a better option with the help of the planned blue-ribbon panel. Although most Nevada officials oppose Yucca, Reid has been the best-positioned and most active in trying to kill the project, which he says is unsafe and was foisted onto his state in political deal-making years ago.<br><br> However, Reid is facing a very tough re-election fight next fall, and currently trails likely GOP challenger and Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Susan Lowden by 8.4 points as of October 19, according to an average of polls from the Real Clear Politics Web site. That raises the possibility that the administration may be sinking a project that has been studied for two decades, at a cost of about $10 billion, at the behest of a politician who may gone in a year. Reid 9s electoral trouble in Nevada cmake this all the more interesting 4why would they [the administration] want to walk the plank here for Reid? d asked one glum pro-Yucca source last week.<br><br> One answer is surely that Obama needs Reid badly to help carry out legislative priorities that he sees as far bigger than Yucca Mountain, namely health care, climate change and regulation of the financial industry. POSTED: -- Glenn Carroll, Coordinator NUCLEAR WATCH SOUTH

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