Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

House OKs stopgap storage

Interim sites sought for nuclear waste

WASHINGTON -- The House voted Tuesday to start storing nuclear waste at federal government sites as a stopgap while work continues on a Yucca Mountain repository.

Lawmakers also supported accelerated research into nuclear fuel recycling, technology that scientists have said could wring more energy from reprocessed nuclear waste while reducing the volume and radioactivity of waste that would be buried in Nevada.

The new directions for nuclear waste were outlined in a $29.7 billion spending bill for the Department of Energy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The bill passed 416-13 and goes to the Senate.

"It is time to rethink our approach to spent fuel," said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the energy and water subcommittee chairman and author of the measure.

"We already are storing foreign reactor fuel at DOE sites, and its time to think we do the same thing for domestic fuel."

Hobson said nuclear waste needs to be moved away from power plants, where it is costing the government $1 billion a year in legal liabilities and project delays.

Yucca Mountain, which the House bill fully funded at $661 million, would remain a cornerstone of the waste disposal strategy.

The bill directs Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to identify interim waste storage sites four months after the bill becomes law and to start moving spent fuel from nuclear utilities to one or more locations by the end of 2006.

The bill identified nuclear sites in South Carolina, Washington state and Idaho as among potential hosts.

The Energy Department has been lukewarm to the idea, and some officials in the nuclear industry fear it could distract attention from completing the Yucca project, which has been delayed.

Lawmakers said the vote marked the first time the House has supported storing nuclear waste anywhere other than Nevada.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., voted to store nuclear waste at interim sites, while Reps. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., voted against the proposal.

Porter said a push for interim storage outside Nevada will compel lawmakers to consider alternatives to Yucca Mountain. "It is a start in forcing members to understand there needs to be other solutions," he said.

Berkley said she opposes transporting nuclear waste anywhere from reactors where it is stored.

Gibbons had the same position, his spokeswoman said.

Berkley said the proposal to set up interim nuclear waste site is going nowhere. She said it would provoke strong opposition from any targeted state, just as Yucca Mountain has done in Nevada.

"I predict within three years, this ridiculous notion will be dead," Berkley said. "Nobody will go for it."

Lawmakers from potential storage areas were quick to declare their states off-limits.

Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, said a 1995 pact between the Energy Department and the state prevents storage of commercial nuclear waste at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., questioned whether law permits the Energy Department to develop stopgap sites for nuclear waste. The Savannah River site in South Carolina handles nuclear programs and could be a destination.

Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., said the government's nuclear site at Hanford is in the midst of a cleanup.

"It's the last place you'd want to send more nuclear waste," he said.