Nuclear Waste:  Senate and House Disagree on Yucca Mountain Funding

A U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee yesterday approved a fiscal 2004 energy and water appropriations bill that contains significantly less funding than its House counterpart for a project to construct a long-term nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, according to Energy Daily (see GSN, July 9).

The Senate version of the bill, approved by the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, contains $425 million for the Yucca Mountain project — $166 million less than the Energy Department’s fiscal 2004 request and $32 million less than this year’s funding for the project, Energy Daily reported.  In comparison, the House version of the bill contains $765 million for the project, which is $174 million more than the Energy Department’s request and $308 million more than this year’s funding.

The lower funding in the Senate bill was apparently engineered by Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the subcommittee’s top Democrat and an ardent opponent of the Yucca Mountain project, according to Energy Daily.  Reid criticized the House version of the bill Tuesday, saying its allocation for the Yucca Mountain project was “outrageous” and “insulting to Nevadans and all Americans.”

“It is downright hypocritical for the House Republican leadership to talk about fiscal restraint and then pass a Yucca Mountain budget that large,” Reid said.

Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said the differences in funding for the Yucca Mountain project in the House and Senate bills will be a “point of contention” when the two houses work on a final version.

“Funding for this project will be a major point of contention in the conference with the House,” Domenici said (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, July 17).

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Radiological Weapons:  Radioactive Shipments Are Vulnerable to Terrorist Attacks, Experts Say

Participants at an International Atomic Energy Agency conference on the safe transportation of radioactive materials have said that countries are unprepared to respond to a terrorist attack on such shipments, Reuters reported Friday (see GSN, July 8).

Current emergency response plans in many countries are only able to handle “unintelligent accidents,” according to John Large, a nuclear issues consultant hired by Greenpeace.  Countries have failed to plan for “an intelligent terrorist attack where they know the vulnerabilities of your emergency plan,” Large said.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the Vienna-based conference that international regulations and industry practices have “an excellent safety record.”

“Over several decades of transporting radioactive material, there has not been an in-transit accident with serious human health, economic or environmental consequences,” ElBaradei said.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, however, demonstrated that there is “room for improvement” in increasing the security of radioactive material shipments, an IAEA official said (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters/Yahoo!News, July 11).

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Radiological Weapons:  British Police Issue Alert Over Depleted Uranium Theft

British police last week issued a national alert after thieves stole a van containing 30 pounds of depleted uranium from a radioactive waste processing firm, according to the London Sunday Times (see GSN, July 8).

The stolen van had been left unlocked and the keys were in the ignition, according to the Times. 

Nuclear physicist Frank Barnaby said that terrorists might have wanted the material for use in a “dirty bomb,” which combines conventional explosives and radioactive materials.

“If you exploded such a device in Oxford Street the police would be under pressure to evacuate a wide area,” Barnaby said.  “The uranium would spread all over and people would get it on their clothes and take it home with them,” he said (David Leppard, London Sunday Times, July 13).

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