Nevada panel optimistic Yucca Mountain project can be killed

A proposed southern Nevada nuclear waste dump is on the "verge of collapse" because of legal and budgetary setbacks, a report by a state board concludes.

The Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, which oversees the state's fight against the dump at Yucca Mountain, called the project a "dead man walking" and expressed optimism that it could be killed.

The report was delivered to Gov. Kenny Guinn and the Legislature just before Monday's start of the 2005 session. The panel is urging legislators to continue funding the state's anti-Yucca Mountain efforts.

"While the proposed Southern Nevada repository may be in the category of a 'dead man walking,' much remains to be done in the next two years to assure the state does, in fact, prevail," the seven-member panel wrote.

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis disputed the report. "We continue to move forward," he said.

Former Nevada Gov. Bob List, a consultant to the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the report was designed to boost support for the anti-Yucca Mountain campaign in the Legislature.

"There's quite a lot of hyperbole in there," List said. "One of the clear objectives is to promote and justify the expenditure of state dollars to underwrite the costs of this fight."

The 32-page report recounted DOE delays after a federal court last year rejected proposed radiation standards for the underground waste dump. New standards are being developed.

The report predicted DOE would run into broad opposition whenever it announces details of a nationwide nuclear waste shipping campaign.

The state is making inroads against Yucca Mountain because of the aggressiveness of its lawyers and Energy Department missteps, the report added.

"DOE's problems, many of them the result of the department's own politicized science and mismanagement, continue to mount," commission Chairman Brian McKay said in the report.

Construction of the waste facility at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been a top priority of the White House and the nuclear industry.

Plans had called for it to be completed and accepting high-level nuclear waste by 2010. But officials have acknowledged that schedule will not be met.