WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers are bracing for new Bush administration efforts to speed work at Yucca Mountain, this time against a backdrop of renewed government interest in nuclear fuel reprocessing.

Department of Energy officials declined Thursday to discuss initiatives that would increase federal spending on reprocessing and possible U.S. offers to recycle radioactive waste from foreign countries.

More details are expected to surface when the Bush administration releases its proposed fiscal 2007 budget on Feb. 6. Some have speculated that Bush might mention nuclear waste in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.

DOE spokesman Craig Stevens said the proposed Nevada waste repository at Yucca Mountain will remain a key part of any Bush plan to expand use of nuclear energy, but he would not say how it might fit into new strategies.

"No matter what policy initiatives we take on, we are going to need a permanent repository for nuclear fuel based on the law and sound science," Stevens said.

In recent speeches, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., Senate Energy Committee chairman, has said he expects the Bush administration to submit nuclear waste legislation to Congress in February.

"The few details that we know about the Bush administration's proposal are cause for serious concern," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday.

Capitol Hill aides who handle nuclear issues confirmed this week the administration is expected to seek accounting changes for the special fund that finances the Yucca Mountain project.

Taking the nuclear waste fund "off budget" would help lawmakers to appropriate large sums for repository construction without running afoul of congressional budget restrictions, project supporters have said.

But critics have prevailed in Congress to have the plan killed whenever it has been proposed. They contend such a move would diminish the ability of Congress to use its purse strings and hold project managers accountable.

A new bill is expected to grant the Energy Department a permanent public land withdrawal for a railroad across rural Nevada to convey waste containers to the Yucca site.

Other Yucca-related provisions have been debated within the Bush administration and among repository supporters on Capitol Hill, but whether the administration's new bill will address radiation standards being formed by the Environmental Protection Agency was unclear. Also unclear was whether the measure will contain elements to help DOE with a project redesign it announced in October.

Also a mystery is whether Yucca Mountain might play a role in an international nuclear waste initiative that the Bush administration is forming according to published reports since last summer.

New details reported Thursday in The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal indicate Bush will include $250 million in his fiscal 2007 budget as a down payment for initiatives that seek to reprocess spent nuclear fuel in ways that aim to reduce its volumes and its toxicity.

The United States used to reprocess spent fuel but stopped in the late 1970s because the resulting material could be used in nuclear weapons.

Other parts of the initiative reportedly would involve the United States accepting nuclear waste for reprocessing from overseas users as a way to account for nuclear material in circulation. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman supported the concept in a speech he delivered in November at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

A new reprocessing technology being developed in federal laboratories could recycle spent fuel for further use while making waste products less in volume and less toxic and less likely to be used in nuclear weapons, backers said. But critics said the technology will be expensive.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., called the plan "a disaster waiting to happen."

"The idea that President Bush wants the U.S. to become the world's nuclear garbage dump should be met with absolute outrage," Berkley said. She said the plan will increase pressure to bury nuclear end products at Yucca Mountain.

Reid said he also was concerned.

"Reprocessing is an idea that's worth researching, but the transportation of foreign waste is very dangerous," Reid said. "I will fight this every step of the way."

But Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said reprocessing gives Nevada leaders opportunities to steer nuclear waste talk away from Yucca Mountain.

Reprocessed waste would not require miles of tunnels and elaborate shielding such as that being planned at Yucca Mountain to keep deadly and long-lived radioactive particles from escaping into the environment, he said.

"Even though there may have to be a repository someday, it won't be a repository like Yucca Mountain," Ensign said. "If you are able to dramatically decrease the volume and dramatically decrease the radiotoxicity, you won't need what we are building today."