House panel votes to boost funds for interim nuclear storage

"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."

John Scofield, spokesman for the appropriations committee, told the Deseret Morning News that the $10 million was added to a like amount already in the bill, for a total of $20 million, "to expedite the storage of special nuclear materials at an interim facility." Special refers to high-level radioactive waste.

He said the bill does not specify which facility to use for the interim storage.

The subcommittee markup deleted funding for "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons research. Anti-nuclear activists had feared the weapons would be tested at the Nevada Test Site.

Vanessa Pierce of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah said the subcommittee trimmed $4 million for bunker-buster research, "which was the total amount that had been requested for it on the nuclear side."

Pierce added, "That is a huge victory."

She noted that a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences predicts that bunker-buster weapons used in warfare would kill many people other than those inside the underground fortresses they are designed to penetrate.

"If we use a bunker buster, there will be thousands to millions of innocent civilian casualties," said Pierce, HEAL's program director. "And that's not a fate we would wish for anyone."

Closer to home, Pierce said, if the weapon were developed "there's a chance it would be tested, and Utahns would be put at risk for being downwind a second time." By "second time," she was referring to the nuclear bombs detonated above ground at the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s and '60s, dumping radioactive fallout on Utah and other states.

Although the bunker buster would be designed for underground warfare, Utahns may be nervous because in the past venting has occurred at the Nevada Test Site.

In 1970, a 10 kiloton nuclear bomb in a test code-named Baneberry exploded 900 feet underground at the Test Site. It vented, with material breaking the surface. Baneberry spewed a cloud of radioactive debris into the atmosphere.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com