A U.S. House subcommittee has voted to increase funding for interim storage of high-level nuclear waste by $10 million, with the group's chairman expressing doubts about the viability of the planned Yucca Mountain permanent storage site.

Deciding to favor interim storage over permanent could amount to an acknowledgement that Yucca Mountain is far behind schedule.

The money would go to a U.S. Department of Energy interim facility, so the funding is not aimed at the industry-owned Private Fuel Storage site proposed for Skull Valley, Tooele County. But it doesn't preclude construction of the Tooele plant, raising the possibility of more than one temporary facility.

In addition, the markup by the House Energy and Water Developments Subcommittee torpedoed funding for developing the controversial "bunker-buster" nuclear weapon. Some Utahns worried that if the bunker buster were built it would be tested at the nearby Nevada Test Site.

The subcommittee, part of the House Committee on Appropriations, last week approved a $29.7 billion funding bill, to be debated by the full committee today. It would appropriate $661 million for Yucca Mountain.

A committee press release notes the amount is $84 million above the fiscal 2005 funding and "$10 million over the request" by the Bush administration.

The Yucca Mountain site is in trouble because of fierce opposition by a top Democrat, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and officials of the state of Nevada. Also, it has recently been slammed by scandal, including claims of falsifications involving scientific studies of the underground site's ability to withstand water erosion through the eons.

The chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, seemed to question whether Yucca Mountain remains viable. But he supported continuing to spend millions of dollars on the project.

However, the $10 million extra, according to the committee, would start moving "spent nuclear fuel away from reactor sites to an interim DOE (Department of Energy) storage facility."

That apparently excludes funding for the Private Fuel Storage site proposed for Skull Valley for the immediate purposes of the bill. PFS, awaiting licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is a private facility, not a DOE site.

In comments about the appropriations bill that wereposted on the committee's Web site, Hobson commented that the subcommittee did not fund Yucca Mountain as strongly as he would have liked.

"I don't like going forward with so little money for Yucca Mountain, but we are playing the hand that we were dealt," he said. Hobson added he remains "hopeful that the administration will come to its senses, or that the Senate will find a creative way to keep Yucca alive."