WASHINGTON -- Shortly after the Department of Energy resurrected legislation Tuesday to speed the licensing of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada's senators countered with their own bill to keep the waste at reactors where it is produced.

As he announced the reintroduction of a new "fix Yucca Mountain" bill, the project's leader acknowledged that much of the work on a repository license application is being redone.

"I don't have an exact number, but I'm betting it's at least 60 percent of the work we're doing this year ... we are redoing work that's been done before," said Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

Sproat blamed the need for the work on "management behaviors" creating a "willingness to put up with less than adequate quality; willingness to -- when issues are raised -- just let them sit, hope they go away."

A new management team is working on the license application, which should be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 30, 2008, Sproat said.

But Sproat said the goal of opening a Yucca Mountain repository by 2017 will slip if Congress does not approve the department's bill.

It would do the following:

• Give the department greater access to the nuclear waste fund, which totals about $19.5 billion, Sproat said.

• Permanently withdraw from public use the land at and surrounding Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

• Remove the storage limit of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

Unless the storage limit is removed, Sproat said, he will have to ask Congress next year to approve a second nuclear waste repository to hold spent fuel that will be generated by the nation's nuclear power reactors and by additional plants that are on the drawing board.

Congress approved $100 million less for Yucca Mountain this year than the Bush administration requested, Sproat said.

The lower figure will not affect the license application, but it will delay engineering on a rail line to the repository.

The Environmental Protection Agency's standards for radiation exposure from the repository are expected soon. But when the standards are released, Sproat expects another lawsuit, which will last "three or four years."

Within the next three weeks, Sproat said he hopes to release figures on the total construction costs of the Yucca Mountain project.

Nevada senators, who have battled the Energy Department over Yucca Mountain, unveiled their counter-measure later in the day. It would make the federal government responsible for monitoring the nuclear waste at reactor sites across the country.

Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., dismissed the Bush administration's Yucca Mountain bill.

Ensign said the bill is "dead on arrival," and Reid described its chances as "pretty slim."

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who is running for president and has an eye on winning Nevada's early Democratic caucus, also weighed in with a statement, which described the measure as "misguided policy."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., called the bill "a last-ditch effort to try and bring this project back from the brink of total collapse."

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said he was puzzled by the bill because the Yucca Mountain project "has been broken from its inception."