Senate Passes Bill to Create Nuclear Waste Dump

Taking a step toward resolving the long-running controversy over where to store thousands of tons of nuclear waste, the Senate passed a bill Wednesday to create an interim storage site at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas.

The measure was approved 63 to 7 and now goes to the House, where it faces a crowded legislative agenda and White House opposition.

The bill’s proponents, including Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, attributed the White House opposition to election-year politics rather than policy concerns.

“The president has to recognize that we had a bipartisan vote up here and exercised leadership on the issue,” Murkowski said. “It’s time for him to do the same. If he chooses to veto, that would be an irresponsible act.”

The legislation has been strongly pushed by the nuclear energy industry. Nuclear sludge and other highly radioactive byproducts of nuclear energy generation have been piling up in cooling pools at more than 100 power plants nationwide.

The bill’s supporters argue that a centralized site would be safer than storage at the power plants and 81 other temporary sites in 41 states, many of which are near businesses, schools and homes in growing population areas. The proposed site is near a former weapons testing range 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Opponents, including environmentalists and other Nevada state officials, say the interim site is unnecessary because individual power plants can continue to store the waste for years to come.

They fear that using Yucca Mountain for temporary storage will inevitably lead to developing the site as the nation’s permanent repository of nuclear waste.

They also say the cross-country transportation of the deadly waste would endanger millions of people along routes through 43 states--invoking the notion of a “mobile Chernobyl,” the notorious Russian nuclear reactor that exploded 10 years ago in the Ukraine.

“We’re sad that the Senate caved in to the radioactive lobby,” said Anna Aurilio, a scientist with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington.

Nevada’s two Democratic senators had managed to tie the measure up with a series of parliamentary maneuvers. But on the House side, the state’s tiny two-member delegation seems unlikely to be able to muster similar opposition.

“It is a travesty,” said Nevada Sen. Richard H. Bryan. “This is special-interest legislation at its worst . . . with big bucks behind it.”

But the Nevadans faced a formidable dilemma: Their vociferous opposition to the bill has been accompanied by sighs of relief from other states that are not being considered for the waste storage facility.

The White House has already signaled that it would veto the plan, saying that the measure would preempt numerous environmental laws and divert resources from developing a permanent underground waste repository. The measure’s 63 favorable votes in the Senate are four short of the number needed to override a presidential veto.

California’s two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, voted against the bill, choosing to focus on a permanent storage facility.

The measure calls for establishing an interim storage site. But because Yucca Mountain is the only location being studied for a long-term repository, opponents fear that if nuclear waste is approved for temporary storage, it will stay there--possibly forever.

Under the bill, waste would start accumulating at the interim site in late 1999.

If Yucca Mountain is found suitable for permanent storage, construction would start in 2002. It would take 50 to 100 years to transfer all the high-level nuclear to the waste repository.

Advocates complain that a permanent repository is taking too long to create. The high costs of storing the nuclear waste threaten to make nuclear power noncompetitive in the energy market, the bill’s supporters argued.

The Senate bill, industry officials said, makes good on the federal government’s promise to address the nuclear waste storage issue.

The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act set up a fund to pay for a permanent waste repository. The fund, supported by nuclear utilities and their ratepayers, stands at about $6 billion, according to Senate staffers.