Energy Chief Urges Yucca Mountain for Nuclear Waste

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham formally recommended Thursday that Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Los Vegas, be developed as the final resting spot for 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.

In a letter to the White House, Abraham said that 20 years and $4 billion in scientific study give him “confidence” that Yucca Mountain is the right place for the depository.

He assured President Bush that the site “will be able to protect the health and safety of the public.”

A spokesman for Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn said the state is braced for the president to throw his support behind Yucca Mountain, perhaps as early as today.

“The governor has been prepared for quite some time” for Yucca Mountain to be selected, said Greg Bortolin, a spokesman for Guinn. “He has said all along that he will veto that decision when the time comes.”

Guinn, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) met with Bush on Feb. 7 in the Oval Office to press Nevada’s case that Yucca Mountain should not be chosen.

All three Nevadans said after the meeting that they thought the president was attentive in listening to their case.

“And at that meeting,” Bortolin said Thursday, “the governor told the president to his face that he [Guinn] would veto any decision to develop Yucca Mountain.”

Several procedural hurdles will remain once the president approves the plan, but his verdict would make development of the site likely.

After Guinn formally objects to the plan, Congress will have 90 legislative days to overrule his objection.

A simple majority in both the House and the Senate is needed to overrule a governor’s rejection. Reid, who ardently opposes burying waste at Yucca Mountain, believes he has only a 40% chance, at best, to persuade enough members of Congress to join him in opposing the site, according to his spokesman, Nathan Naylor.

Congressional approval of the plan would not be the final word. The proposal would then go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for licensing, a process that could take several years. Even then, the project still could be rejected.

Nonetheless, the president’s announcement would serve as an important landmark in a 40-year search for a safe storage place for the vast quantities of highly radioactive material now at nuclear power plants and other facilities in 39 states.

The Bush administration argues that consolidating the waste in one national nuclear dump would help protect the country from the threat of terrorist attacks.

But Nevadans, along with environmentalists around the country, argue that transporting the spent fuel on trucks and train cars would create an even greater risk for terrorist attacks.

The waste contains radioactive elements that remain active, and potentially life-threatening, for hundreds of thousands of years.

Bush has signaled his strong support for consolidating nuclear waste in one depository, and since 1987, Yucca Mountain has been the only site under consideration.

In his recommendation, Abraham stressed that the Yucca Mountain site is “technically suitable” and “the science behind this project is sound.”

Abraham said the site would support nuclear nonproliferation aims by providing a secure place to put nuclear waste from decommissioned weapons.

It also would play a key role in protecting the nation’s energy supply by ensuring a storage place for waste from nuclear power plants, which account for 20% of the nation’s energy, and help the environment by providing a storage site for nuclear material from cleanups of defense waste sites.

Guinn and other state officials are expected to fight the proposal vehemently. The state of Nevada already has sued to block the development of Yucca Mountain on environmental grounds and has threatened more lawsuits.

But even Reid, who as Senate majority whip wields power in the chamber, conceded that the struggle against turning Yucca into a nuclear waste dump is an uphill battle.

Reid and the rest of Nevada’s congressional delegation are trying to win support by stressing to their colleagues that if the project is approved, tons of nuclear waste will be transported through most states. That prospect, he said, could prove unsettling to many senators’ constituents.

Officials in San Bernardino County, which borders Nevada and through which nuclear waste would travel, have expressed concern that the Department of Energy has not adequately addressed the risk posed to communities along the nuclear waste route.

Critics of the administration’s decision pointed to a Government Accounting Office report released late last month that said it was “premature” by several years to recommend the site because of the many unresolved technical and scientific issues on the project.

The report by the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress said hundreds of scientific tests and experiments must still be conducted to determine if nuclear waste can be safely stored for more than 10,000 years in containers below Yucca Mountain.

The GAO said it didn’t believe that the site would be operational before 2015.

But the nuclear industry is impatient for a site to be designated and stressed that the federal government has been legally obligated to start receiving spent nuclear fuel from power plants since 1998.

The Energy Department has said it would like to open the facility in 2010.

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Shogren reported from Washington, Gorman from Las Vegas.