Summary: The law prohibits Nevada from using its nuclear waste grant funds for lobbying, litigation, and certain multistate activities. Yet GAO found that Nevada had used this money to advance, on a national stage, its opposition to a repository at Yucca Mountain. In one case, a videotape produced by a contractor was intended to influence legislation pending before Congress. In another case, Nevada's use of grant funds to underwrite a multistate tour in 1993 was inappropriate because the main goal of the tour appeared to be to generate public opposition in other states to the repository project. Until 1992, the Energy Department (DOE) reviewed and approved the state's applications for grant funds and required the state to give DOE periodic progress and financial reports. Since then, DOE's role in overseeing the state's grant has diminished. The agency makes direct grant payments to the state, and Nevada must certify that the money was spent in accordance with the law. DOE has recovered about $75,000 of the more than $1 million that GAO previously reported as improperly spent. DOE has decided that $670,000 worth of expenditures was either allowable or that it would not try to recover the funds. DOE has no records of whether it ever decided to recover the remaining $309,000 in expenditures that GAO questioned.
