WASHINGTON -- An Idaho senator said Wednesday he is uncowed by incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, and plans to reintroduce a bill in the next Congress that would speed nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.

"Harry in his wildest dreams wishes it would go away but it is not going to go away," Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican member of the Senate energy committee, said of the proposed nuclear spent fuel repository.

Speaking to reporters following a speech to a nuclear industry conference, Craig said the Department of Energy will have the necessary money to continue toward repository licensing.

Reid will have to deal with Yucca Mountain despite his opposition to the project and expectations he will block any progress on it as the incoming Senate majority leader, he said.

"This is an issue that cannot be avoided by Harry Reid," said Craig, a leading nuclear energy supporter. "The Congress has been increasingly friendly to nuclear and they don't want to build impediments."

"I will not let a single senator create a trip wire that will slow the energy progress of this country," Craig said.

Craig's remarks could set a combative tone for debate in the upcoming Congress over Yucca Mountain.

They also suggest that although Reid stands to wield power on nuclear waste matters, some pro-nuclear senators may confront him on the issue.

"Some think a bit differently than I do about how we deal with" Reid, Craig said. "This is a political issue and the politics of this will play out on Capitol Hill over the next few years."

But Craig said he was "not sure" ultimately how to get around Reid, who could use his powers to prevent bills from reaching Senate floor votes.

A Yucca Mountain bill might be "sweetened" with other provisions to build support, or perhaps tagged onto more popular bills, he said.

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the Nevadan plans to stand firm.

He said repository backers are trying to isolate Reid, overlooking that "plenty of senators and congressional representatives are on our side."

"There is no way that Senator Reid will agree to interim storage at Yucca Mountain," Summers said.

"Some of what is being said sounds more like last-ditch efforts to breathe life into this thing. At the end of the day, Yucca Mountain is going to die."

Reid will continue to promote his own bill that would require the Department of Energy to keep nuclear waste stored at power reactors, and to manage it there until alternatives to underground disposal can be developed, Summers said.

Craig told nuclear industry executives he plans to reintroduce a bill that would allow military nuclear waste to be shipped to Yucca Mountain starting in 2010, and commercial spent fuel to be stored there in above-ground casks a year later.

Under the process in law now, Department of Energy officials have projected to open an underground repository in 2017 at the earliest, and perhaps three or more years later, at the Yucca site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.