Department of Energy
ORG
Department of Energy
The Energy Department no longer has an estimate of when it can open the nuclear waste repository that it wants to build at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Last week the deputy energy secretary, Clay Sell, hinted for the first time that the money that the Energy Department had been collecting from the nuclear utilities since the 1980's might not be enough to pay for the project; the last published cost estimate was $60 billion, in 2001. The department is facing lawsuits from utilities that want to recover extra costs created by the delay. The Energy Department no longer has an estimate of when it can open the nuclear waste repository that it wants to build at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and it may never have an accurate prediction of the cost, the secretary, Samuel W. Bodman said that. But it is a first-of-a-kind project, making cost estimates difficult, he said, and the best that the department may be able to do is publish an estimate with a very wide range of error. The department is facing lawsuits from utilities that want to recover extra costs created by the delay.