‘Tis the season for finalizing Federal agency budgets in exchanges between the various Departments and the Office of Management and Budget, which means it’s also the season for strategic leaks of budget documents by folks seeking public support for changes they support.  In keeping with this tradition, the Energy Daily (http://www.theenergydaily.com/) reports on “internal DOE budget documents” showing that the Department of Energy ”plans to abandon next month its Yucca Mountain license application pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”  a move that would, in ED’s nice little pun “bury the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository for good.”

Yucca Mountain has been a dead man walking for years now.  And perhaps we need some closure here to move on to the next phase of our national debate on what to do with nuclear waste (or as the new preferred term has it — “used fuel”).

There will surely be closure, if this language survives through the budget pass-back process:  “All license defense activities will be terminated in December 2009.”

That line also represents a bit of a defeat for DOE Secretary Steve Chu, who “has maintained that DOE should continue work on Yucca application to better understand NRC’s criteria for a potential future disposal site.”

Instead, that language means that ”DOE would stop responding to NRC staff questions about technical aspects of the giant application, virtually guaranteeing that NRC could not approve it.”

Of course in some sense this is not news.  Realistic observers, even Yucca supporters, have known for years that Yucca is dead.  Ardent Yucca proponents have for some time been looking like the dead parrot salesman in the old Monty Python skit:    “It’s not dead, it’s resting.”

Yet there is that pesky little problem of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.  As the ED writes:  ”Utilities have already won nearly $600 million in court awards from DOE stemming from the department’s failure to begin disposing of the utilities’ spent fuel in Yucca beginning in 1998, a date the two sides agreed upon in a set of 1983 contracts.”  And the often-wrong but never in doubt “knowledgeable sources” tell the Daily that “DOE has continued work on the Yucca license largely to forestall lawsuits from U.S. nuclear utilities.”  Yep, that could be a problem.

But then the piece gets really interesting, as ED puts on its politico hat:

“Many think the decision to kill Yucca was aimed at fulfilling a political promise that Obama made to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)—an ardent Yucca foe—when Obama was running for president and needed Reid’s support.”  Ok, but there are a whole lot of folks in the enviro community – firmly ensconced in the Democratic base — who revel in their Yucca opposition.  But wait, there’s more, as ED really lays on the political analysis:

“Reid is facing a very tough re-election fight next fall, and currently trails likely GOP challenger and Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Susan Lowden by 8.4 points as of October 19, according to an average of polls from the Real Clear Politics Web site.

“That raises the possibility that the administration may be sinking a project that has been studied for two decades, at a cost of about $10 billion, at the behest of a politician who may gone in a year.

“Reid’s electoral trouble in Nevada “make this all the more interesting—why would they [the administration] want to walk the plank here for Reid?” asked one glum pro-Yucca source last week.”

Walk a plank?  Really?  That phrase used to mean taking a vote or a stand that carried huge political risk.  There’s little chance that the Obama Administration is going to take significant heat for this decision.  Nor, frankly, should they.  While thoughtful people can legitimately believe that Yucca Mountain is the best repository for our used fuel, it is long past time to move on to “Plan B.”  The longer we argue about Yucca, the further off a workable solution remains.  Let’s give Yucca Mountain a dignified burial and move on.