WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives voted to fund the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008 (H.R. 2641) June 20, despite an attempt by Rep.'s Jon Porter (R-Henderson), Dean Heller (R-Carson City) and Shelley Berkley (D- Las Vegas) to remove $202 million in Yucca Mountain construction funding from the legislation.

The amendment was defeated by a vote of 80 to 351.

Heller said the amendment "would strike the funding for the proposed Yucca Mountain site, and help end this enormous financial disaster for the taxpayers and for Nevada."

He said Nevada has been wrestling with the Yucca Mountain project for decades. "The federal government has spent billions of dollars, and we are frankly almost no closer today to opening this site than we were years ago. As has been stated by my Nevada colleagues, over the past 20 years the proposed site has suffered from gross mismanagement, faulty science and research, and contract mismanagement," he said.

Heller said he and his colleagues are not against safer concepts, "like dry-cask storage."

He said both senators, the governor and the House delegation are united in opposition to Yucca Mountain.

"That should send a very clear message to us here in the House about the opposition in Nevada," Heller said.