Bush Pressed to Delay Waste Site Approval

Nevada officials made a last-minute plea Thursday to President Bush, trying to dissuade him from approving construction of a nuclear waste site in their state until safety issues are resolved.

“Yucca Mountain should not go forward at this point,” Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said after a 25-minute, closed-door meeting in the Oval Office.

The president gave no indication of how or when he will decide on whether to move ahead with the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

But the senators and Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn viewed their meeting as the last chance to get Bush to hold off on any decision.

Bush is expected to decide in favor of the Yucca Mountain site as early as next week, congressional and administration sources said.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham endorsed the site Jan. 10 but by law has to wait 30 days to give a formal recommendation to the president. That waiting period expires Saturday.

Abraham called it a “scientifically sound and suitable” place to bury the nation’s used reactor fuel now kept at nuclear power plants.

But Guinn said the group’s main pitch to the president was that too many questions remain unanswered to move ahead now. Any decision, Guinn said, should be “predicated on sound science that will last for thousands of years.”

Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.) said he made essentially the same point at a morning meeting with Bush senior advisor Karl Rove.

Gibbons acknowledged that the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had clouded the issue. He said that, during the meeting, Rove said nuclear plant safety and national security implications are weighing heavily on Bush.

“I said the lack of adequate science should weigh heavily too,” Gibbons said.

With Nevada officials saying they will try to prevent the shipment of as much as 77,000 tons of nuclear waste into their state, a final decision will be up to Congress. Nevada can block a presidential decision, but Congress could then overrule the state.

Even after a presidential decision, it will be at least 2010 before the site--once it is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission--would be ready to take any of the waste now kept in spent fuel pools and concrete bunkers at nuclear power plants around the country.