Nuclear fuel and waste, funding to be cut

Along with the funding increase the Department of Energy’s Office of Science received, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is gradually putting his own mark on the agency. Among the cutbacks announced by the Obama administration in the 120-page “Terminations, Reductions, and Savings: Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2010 ”, was funding for the politically controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage repository. According to the 2010 budget proposal the DOoE will shut down the facility and continue to store waste at the 103 nuclear power plants while a “‘blue-ribbon’” commission studies alternatives, such as developing technologies to “burn” the high-level waste into something less long-lived.

Moreover, the program connected to providing electric utilities loans to pay for licensing new nuclear reactors will end next year, saving $158 million. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently processing 26 reactors through the combined operating licensing procedures. The Obama administration argues that this level of interest indicates the subsidies are no longer needed.

The oil and gas industry also loses some tax breaks that from 2011 would be worth $1.47 billion. Costly subsidies “do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices ... and would cost taxpayers $26 billion over the next decade,” the administration says. “Yet these taxes are “only a tiny percentage of annual domestic oil and gas revenues -- about one percent over the coming decade ... [and] any claim that this proposal would have a significant impact on oil and gas production is unfounded.”

Paul Guinnessy