By Steve Tetreault – Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Congress for the second consecutive year is zeroing out spending for the Yucca Mountain project, the nuclear waste plan that continues to recede as government policy.

A catch-all 2012 spending bill that passed over the weekend contained no funding for the controversial Nevada repository site that now is shrinking in the rear-view mirror as lawmakers prepare to review new recommendations for managing highly radioactive used nuclear fuel.

Spending for Yucca Mountain was among dozens of policy issues settled in recent days as Congress prepares to complete this year’s session.

“Once again, Congress will not appropriate a single dime to make Nevada the nation’s dumping ground for nuclear waste,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

“Yucca Mountain was never a good idea and it’s time to move on towards real solutions that ensure Americans’ health and safety,” Reid said.

Reid was said to have used his influence to block the latest efforts by Republicans and some Democrats to resurrect the Yucca project that the Obama administration terminated in 2009.

The lawmakers represent districts that are home to commercial nuclear power plants where spent fuel is kept in pools and above-ground casks, and government reservations where millions of gallons of Cold War nuclear remnants are stored.

They charge the administration acted illegally to end the project without permission from Congress and in a move to curry favor with Reid.

For their part, Reid and other Nevada leaders who have opposed Yucca Mountain challenge whether nuclear waste could be buried safely at the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Rep. John Shimkus, an Illinois Republican who advocated restarting the Yucca project, was disappointed by the outcome of the budget talks, a spokesman said.

“The congressman was able to show bipartisan support for Yucca Mountain … but the negotiations between the House and Senate were out of his control,” said spokesman Steve Tomaszewski.

Shimkus, who delivered weekly House speeches this fall challenging senators to stand up to Reid, “will continue to support Yucca Mountain through personal efforts and by trying to show support by a majority,” Tomaszewski said.

Shimkus led a three member congressional delegation on a tour of Yucca Mountain last spring. Delegates from rural Nevada counties voiced support for the program after the tour.

The action keeps the nation’s nuclear waste policy in limbo at least until a blue ribbon commission formed by the Obama administration issues its recommendations on alternatives to Yucca Mountain. Its report is due late in January.

Propelled by Shimkus and other pro-repository lawmakers, the House this summer voted to provide the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy with $45 million for Yucca-related activities, and a directive to resume license hearings on the repository in 2012.

The Senate declined to support any funding that could keep the program on life support. It prevailed in negotiations over the final version of a year-end spending bill that were finalized late Thursday.

Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Officer Director Darrell Lacy said the House put a small amount of money into the Yucca Mountain budget for 2012, but only $25 million to $30 million, enough to keep the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and U.S. Department of Energy looking at the project.

What’s more important to the Yucca Mountain project is the upcoming hearing in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in February on a writ of mandamus filed by South Carolina and Washington state objecting to the process by which the license application was terminated.

Lacy said some staff members at the Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office are working part-time on other projects, like geoscientist Levi Kryder, who is working on natural resource issues and the Nye County Water District.

Bob Gamble, the county’s on-site representative at the DOE office in Las Vegas, retired.

Lacy said the county is down to a couple of secretaries and a couple of geologists in a department that once employed 18 people.

“We are down to half the staff we were before and it will be dwindling even more if we don’t get Yucca funds back. We got some money last year based on the prior fiscal year we weren’t expecting, a little over $1 million,” Lacy said.

Overall, the federal spending bill would provide $915 billion to fund a range of federal activities for which Congress failed to pass individual appropriations this year.

Earlier this month, a group of key senators who work on energy policies confirmed they have agreed to work on post-Yucca legislation for short-term and long-term nuclear waste storage. The findings of the blue ribbon commission would serve as a base.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., told Congressional Quarterly it is “urgently important we find a place to temporarily and permanently put the used fuel and not just stay stuck in an argument about Yucca Mountain.”

Other senators involved in the talks included Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico; and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Mark Waite from the Pahrump Valley Times contributed to this article.