By TONY BATT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- A House panel on Thursday added $10 million to the White House budget request for Yucca Mountain in 2006, and instructed the Department of Energy to use the additional money to select one or two sites next year for interim storage of nuclear waste.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water, said the interim storage sites should be Energy Department facilities located outside Nevada, but declined to say where.

"Frankly, it's time to rethink our approach to dealing with spent (nuclear) fuel," Hobson said. "We need to start moving spent fuel away from reactor sites to one or more centralized, above-ground facilities at (Department of Energy) sites."

Foreign nuclear waste already is being stored at Energy Department sites, Hobson said. "It's time we do the same for our domestic spent (nuclear) fuel," he said.

Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been designated to receive 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from the nation's power plants, but it is uncertain when the storage will begin.

Hobson said Yucca Mountain cannot store all of the nation's nuclear waste and interim storage will ease the burden.

The White House has not yet signed off on interim storage. Energy Department spokeswoman Anne Womack said the administration is examining the subcommittee's budget legislation "but moving forward on Yucca Mountain."

The subcommittee approved $661 million next year for Yucca Mountain, which is an $84 million increase above this year's budget.

"It's critical we get Yucca Mountain done right and done soon," Hobson said.

Beyond interim storage, the subcommittee directed the Energy Department to develop advanced technology for reprocessing nuclear spent fuel at one or more DOE sites by 2007.

Critics of reprocessing claim it would make spent nuclear fuel easier for terrorists to obtain.

The subcommittee also rejected a Bush administration request of $4 million next year for a study on a new nuclear weapon known as the robust nuclear earth penetrator, or "bunker buster." If developed, some observers believe the "bunker buster" might be tested at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.


Note: Hobson's District makes dry casks