New York (Platts)--16Nov2009/237 am EST/737 GMT

Alarmed by a leaked US Department of Energy memo that outlines the Obama administration's strategy for ending the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project in Nevada, pro-nuclear groups began urging key lawmakers last week to block DOE's now-apparent plan to abandon Yucca's pending license application as early as next month.

Martez Norris of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, a group of electric utilities, state regulators and other entities that support Yucca Mountain, said her organization is urging House of Representatives and Senate appropriators to reject any DOE request to reprogram funds designated for licensing activities.

"We're not waiting until DOE acts," said Norris, the coalition's executive director. "The administration's budget request clearly identified that the funding was to support the licensing agreement. For them to turn around and take the fiscal 2010 budget and use it for other things -- they're basically not complying."

John Keeley of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, was more circumspect about the leaked memo, which details DOE's proposed budget requests for Yucca Mountain for fiscal years 2011 to 2015. The memo also declares that "all license defense activities will be terminated in December 2009."

"Because it's preliminary, we'll wait for the actual budget numbers to come out before we comment," Keeley said. "Things are fluid."

The October 23 memo from DOE Chief Financial Officer Steve Isakowitz to the department's program budget officers states that the target funding for Yucca Mountain in fiscal 2011 is $46.2 million, a fraction of the $196.8 million the program received in FY-10. FY-11 begins October 1, 2010.

Of that $46.2 million, $25 million would be used to support the archiving of data associated with the Yucca Mountain program and the remaining $21.2 million would be used for site remediation and worker transition. The document also shows that no funds would be sought for the program from fiscal years 2012 to 2015.

Although the budget request is considered a working draft, Isakowitz wrote that "we do not expect the information to change."

DOE Press Secretary Stephanie Mueller declined to confirm any of the memo's contents.

--Herman Wang, herman_wang@platts.com

--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com