Nuclear Waste Fund to cover most Yucca Mountain costs in FY 2005?

摘要

If The Bush Administration has its way, all costs incurred by the civilian high-level radioactive waste program in fiscal year 2005 will be met by money withdrawn from the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF), the federal account into which nuclear utilities have been paying, in anticipation of repository licensing, construction, and operation. The Department of Energy is taking the position that this sort of work will begin in earnest in the period from October 2004 through September 2005, and that the time has therefore come for the DOE to begin using the NWF money that has been accumulating since the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 went into effect. In addition, the expected FY 2005 costs are sharply higher than those for the program in previous years—$749 million, roughly four times the amount appropriated for FY 2004—so the NWF withdrawal would allow the DOE to offset the effect of the steeply higher appropriation.