WASHINGTON -- An Energy Department official said Thursday there is "zero" chance to meet new deadlines to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain unless Congress broadens DOE powers to keep the project moving forward.

Project director Ward Sproat urged senators to pass a "fix Yucca" bill to clear away potential problems that could delay DOE's latest repository deadline of 2017.

"The probability of making that schedule without the legislation is zero," Sproat said.

But repository critics said at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that DOE was trying to cut corners. The bill would allow DOE to run roughshod over Nevada and other states on transportation, water claims and handling of toxic waste, they said.

"You have before you a bill that attempts like a cowcatcher on a locomotive to anticipate and sweep aside every potential health and safety obstacle," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"This bill overreaches and should be withdrawn," said Geoffrey Fettus, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Martin Virgilio, a deputy executive director at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, also questioned the bill, saying it could cut short the NRC's time to carry out comprehensive safety reviews of the plan.

The committee chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said he was planning a scaled back version of the DOE bill for action this fall. He would not say what parts of the sweeping bill he would include and which parts he might scrap.

Domenici said he was taking the new DOE schedule with a grain of salt. The repository was supposed to have been operating by 1998, and a 2010 target opening also was abandoned.

"Experience has shown that the schedule for Yucca is a slippery thing," Domenici said, adding that the 2017 deadline contains no margins for future delays or lawsuits by the state of Nevada. Nor does it lay out how long it will take DOE to ship commercial fuel to the site once it has opened.

The DOE bill contains a dozen or so changes to federal law that Yucca managers say they need to lay the groundwork for repository licensing and construction.

Among other things, it would allow DOE to overcome Nevada resistance to obtain water rights, assert powers on waste transportation, reclassify a budget account so larger sums might be spent for construction, and repeal a 70,000 metric ton limit on how much waste can be stored in the mountain.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the DOE bill signals desperation.

"If Yucca were scientifically sound -- if it was genuinely safe -- we would not have this bill and we would not be here today," he said.

In testimony, Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. focused on a DOE bid to assert control over a portion of the Nellis Test and Training Range adjacent to the Yucca site.

The Energy Department is asking Congress in its bill to sign off on a 147,000-acre public land withdrawal that would give DOE prominence on 24,000 acres now run by the Air Force. It also calls for a no-fly zone around the repository.

"This is a very dangerous precedent to start and very dangerous for the national security of the United States," Ensign said.

Sproat said during a break that he was told the Air Force signed off on the land withdrawal when the bill was being formulated within the Bush administration. The Air Force would be allowed continued use of the land under terms to be set by DOE and the Pentagon, according to the DOE bill.

"The amount of land that is being withdrawn is less than 1 percent of the total area of Nellis Air Force Range and the no-fly zone is four miles in radius," Sproat told senators. "The Air Force did not see a problem."

Loux said he found it hard to believe the Air Force would agree to overflight and land use restrictions given it customarily has been protective of its training areas.

"People at Nellis have told us they would never agree to a no-fly zone," Loux said.

Air Force officials at Nellis Air Force Base and at the Pentagon did not respond to queries by deadline.

DOE officials said the Pentagon has an interest in completing the Yucca repository because thousands of tons of waste from nuclear weapons production would be buried there.