WASHINGTON -- Dale Klein, a nuclear waste expert with a long history of support for Yucca Mountain, is in line to be appointed head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

White House officials announced on Thursday that President Bush intends to nominate Klein to a five-year term as chairman of the commission that regulates the nuclear industry and which will play a major role in judging the Nevada site for a nuclear waste repository.

Klein, a longtime professor, associate dean and vice chancellor at the University of Texas, currently works at the Pentagon as assistant defense secretary for nuclear, chemical and biological programs.

But Nevada officials said they remember Klein from the early 1990s when he participated in the Nevada Initiative, an $8.7 million advertising campaign sponsored by the American Nuclear Energy Council to build public support for the Yucca Mountain project.

"I certainly believe (Klein) is completely and totally biased about Yucca Mountain," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects who participated in debates against the engineering professor at the time.

Industry officials justified the multi-pronged Nevada Initiative as an effort to educate residents about nuclear waste and to counter anti-nuclear spin as the government stepped up efforts to characterize Yucca Mountain as a potential repository.

But state leaders and repository critics blasted the campaign as propaganda. Then-Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., called it a "declaration of war."

Klein "was in ads about Yucca Mountain long before any of the scientific information was in," Loux said. "He is entirely biased and completely subservient to the nuclear industry."

According to a November 1991 account in Nuclear Fuel, a newsletter that covers the industry, Klein appeared in a Nevada commercial in which he holds a simulated fuel pellet and "stresses that spent fuel is a solid, not a gas or a liquid, and that it does not leak (spill) or explode."

Klein also was to be featured in newspaper ads listing a toll-free number where Nevadans could call and ask questions, Nuclear Fuel reported then.

Earlier, Klein was on a presidential commission that studied the need for an interim storage site where nuclear waste could be packaged and consolidated until a repository was finished.

Klein would replace outgoing commissioner Nils Diaz as chairman of the five-member nuclear regulatory board.

Klein's pending nomination was applauded by Frank "Skip" Bowman, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, who said Klein "has a broad understanding of commercial nuclear technology and policy issues that will suit him well as NRC chairman."

But Loux suggested Klein be called on to recuse himself from Yucca Mountain matters at the NRC, a position that some Nevada lawmakers also were considering.

Klein faces confirmation in the U.S. Senate, where Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., customarily scrutinizes appointees who could affect the Yucca project. Reid had no comment on Klein.

After a struggle with the Bush administration and Senate Republicans during which he held up dozens of Bush appointees, Reid won confirmation of his science aide, Gregory Jaczko, to a two-year term to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2004.

As a condition, Jaczko was required to recuse himself for one year from participating or commenting on NRC activities related to Yucca Mountain. Jaczko's term expires this year, and Reid has said he is seeking to have him reappointed.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., believes Klein should be held to a similar recusal standard, spokesman David Cherry said.

"If that was the condition the Republicans put upon that nominee, then what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The congresswoman would expect the nominees to be treated the same way."