Yucca project debated anew

WASHINGTON -- Even though there still are gaps in safety rules and designs, the Department of Energy is rushing to show progress on Yucca Mountain before President Bush leaves office, Nevada leaders charged at a Senate hearing Wednesday.

The hearing, in which leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton played a key role just two months before Nevada's early caucus, signaled a shift in how the controversial nuclear waste project is being discussed on Capitol Hill.

The state's senators urged Congress to take a fresh look at pulling the plug on the long-delayed nuclear waste repository that is largely unpopular among Nevadans who perceive that it carries safety and health risks.

Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto warned that the government is heading into chaos. Eight months before the Energy Department expects to file for a construction license, plans for radiation health standards, safety-related designs, shipping casks, emergency response strategies and repository security appear to be up in the air.

"This lack of complete design and planning information is wholly attributable to DOE's rigid insistence on its self-imposed June 2008 license application date," Cortez Masto said.

"In my opinion Yucca Mountain is never going to be completed. We should look for alternatives," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. "We are pouring money down a huge rathole and we should be putting that money to good use."

But Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said it is too late to turn back now, with the Energy Department so close finally to completing decades of studies and compiling them into a license package that will be judged for safety by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

If Yucca Mountain is abandoned after billions of dollars have been spent, Inhofe said, "how do you justify this to taxpayers?"

Ward Sproat, the Department of Energy director in charge of Yucca Mountain, said the criticism is unfounded. He said the project, the work of "2,700 professional engineers and scientists," will meet or exceed standards.

"It doesn't do me any good for the DOE to deliver up a license application and then have it rejected," Sproat said. "We are now at the point where the science is ready."

The arguments during a 21/2-hour hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee largely covered familiar ground. But the atmosphere seemed to have shifted after years where supporters of the Yucca project headed key Senate committees and encouraged the program along.

With Democrats in charge of the Senate and many of them generally less enthusiastic about Yucca Mountain, all the Democratic presidential candidates have announced their opposition, the hearing allowed Ensign, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other repository opponents to begin assembling a new, more critical public record while putting the project on the defensive.

Reid said afterward that the tone of the session "makes it very clear that Yucca Mountain is in big trouble," and that senators who customarily have been vocal supporters of the repository had lost some swagger.

Ensign said he reported the same impressions to a White House meeting later Wednesday among Republican leaders, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on a variety of subjects. He would not give their reaction.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a Reid ally who became chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee earlier this year, ran the hearing and stressed her opposition to Yucca Mountain.

She had several tart exchanges with Bush administration witnesses and committee Republicans. At one point she scolded Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who said senators "have a responsibility beyond politics" when it comes to nuclear matters.

"Since I called this hearing, I will tell you what this hearing is about," Boxer snapped. "It is about whether Yucca Mountain is safe."

The Nevadans also were aided by Clinton, D-N.Y., who is running for president and who said her platform includes killing the Yucca project if she is elected.

Clinton showed up on time, was in attendance for 80 minutes and carried out a promise to grill the Environmental Protection Agency about radiation standards for the nuclear site that have not been finalized for almost two years.

Robert Meyers, an EPA deputy administrator, would only say the standards would be ready "soon," despite Clinton's pressing. Clinton said the delay suggested that EPA is having troubles that merit holding up the project.

"What we should not do is push an incomplete application for a flawed site through a rushed and incoherent process," Clinton said, adding, "That is precisely the course of action that this administration intends to pursue."

But Sproat said the licensing process for the repository "is the most transparent regulatory process the federal government has ever seen." He said DOE has been required to share its documents with the state of Nevada and other stakeholders in advance of license hearings.

Ensign said so much time has passed since plans got under way in the early 1980s for underground nuclear waste disposal that technologies such as nuclear fuel recycling are on the horizon, which might alter the need for a dump site.

There also is consensus that nuclear waste safely can be stored at reactors in above-ground containers for 100 years or more, which could buy time for further studies, he said.

But Craig said a repository still will be needed. Government-managed nuclear waste still sitting in Idaho that originated at Three Mile Island and at the long-closed West Valley reprocessing plant in New York might not be able to be reprocessed, he said.

Craig said "responsible senators" need to find a solution. If a repository is scrapped, he said as he looked at Clinton, "do we return (the waste) to West Valley, New York?"

"It is so easy to be against, but it is fundamentally important to act in a responsible manner," Craig said. "We cannot have it both ways."

Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or (202) 783-1760.