WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department does not plan to begin moving nuclear waste away from power plants around the country until it has a license in hand for a repository at Yucca Mountain, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Friday.

Bodman ruled out the government establishing temporary storage sites for nuclear waste while the Nevada disposal site remains on the drawing board.

"All our efforts will be going into the procurement of an operating license" for Yucca Mountain, Bodman said. "At that point in time we will make a decision whether we will take advantage of interim storage opportunities or not."

At that point, which could be years, Bodman said research on nuclear waste reprocessing might guide decisions on whether the spent nuclear fuel should be moved to Yucca Mountain for disposal or sent elsewhere in interim storage to await recycling.

The Bush administration is promoting advanced reprocessing though a new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP.

"All of this fits together," Bodman said. "We would be making those judgments in the future based on what we learn about GNEP and how successful we will be."

The energy secretary's comments in a meeting with reporters shed fresh light on the Bush administration's evolving strategy for handling nuclear waste.

In recent days, administration officials have outlined a plan that features continued emphasis on a Yucca repository but also a big push to explore reprocessing technologies that might wring more use out of spent fuel while making the ultimate end products less toxic for burial in Nevada.

Bush administration officials are finalizing a nuclear waste bill expected to be sent to Congress in the coming days. Bodman said it will not contain interim storage provisions. A second DOE official confirmed that later Friday.

There had been broad speculation within the nuclear industry and on Capitol Hill that the administration might seek to establish temporary storage on federal land in Washington, South Carolina, Idaho, or at the Nevada Test Site.

Officials at the Nuclear Energy Institute were unaware of Bodman's remarks and had no immediate comment, spokeswoman Trish Conrad said.

NEI, the nuclear industry's main trade association, has been among the state and industry groups lobbying for the government to move faster to remove spent fuel from plants in 39 states where it has been accumulating in pools and in "dry cask" storage containers.

DOE missed a Jan. 31, 1998, deadline to begin moving waste off reactor sites, triggering dozens of lawsuits from utilities and continuing pressure to move fuel to Yucca Mountain or elsewhere.

Steve Kraft, NEI nuclear waste director, said last week that moving nuclear waste away from power plants and onto some federal site "is our number one goal" that NEI would lobby for this year.

Under the scenario Bodman discussed, nuclear waste could remain at plant sites for at least five years and most probably longer than that.

The Energy Department is in the midst of a repository redesign and is awaiting radiation health standards for the site. The Environmental Protection Agency has said those will not be finalized until near the end of the year.

At whatever point DOE applies for a repository license, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has four years to evaluate it, a schedule that a number of experts say is optimistic.

The concept of interim storage has been controversial. President Clinton in 2000 vetoed legislation that sought to establish temporary waste storage at the Nevada Test Site.

Last year, however, the House passed a bill directing the administration to explore interim storage. The proposal was dropped from final legislation.