Senate Committee OKs $577 Million for Yucca Mountain

U.S. Senate appropriators have included $577 million in fiscal 2006 for the national nuclear waste depot in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, the Associated Press reported Friday (see GSN, May 25).

The amount is $74 million less than requested by the Bush administration.

The Senate Appropriations Committee allocated the same amount of money for Yucca last year.   Unlike House appropriators, the Senate committee did not include any funds for a temporary waste storage facility while construction at Yucca is completed.   The House allocated $651 million for the Nevada site and set aside $10 million for an interim storage facility, AP reported.

The full Senate must still vote on the Yucca funding, after which lawmakers from both houses will meet to produce a compromise bill.

“This will just be something we have to discuss in a rational fashion at some point,” said Representative David Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Subcommittee (Associated Press/Las Vegas Sun, June 17).

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