Senate OKs Nevada Nuclear Waste Site

The Bush administration’s plan to open the first national nuclear-waste burial ground at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain won final congressional approval Tuesday, a landmark action that could open the door to a new era of growth for the long-stalled nuclear energy industry.

A Republican-led majority rammed the plan through the Senate after only a few hours of debate, despite fierce opposition from Nevadans, the Democratic leadership and many environmentalists. The Senate’s approval, on a voice vote, came after the plan survived a decisive 60-39 roll call on a key procedural question. The House approved the plan in May, 306 to 117.

Advocates contended that government studies costing billions of dollars had found the site suitable for storing high-level radioactive waste for up to 10,000 years.

But critics said the administration failed to prove that the deadly material could be safely stored beneath the volcanic ridge just 90 miles northwest of fast-growing Las Vegas--and roughly 20 miles from the California border. They also claimed that shipping the waste from states around the country, along the nation’s highways and rails, would invite terrorist attacks or risk a catastrophic accident.

The vote was a major victory for both the nuclear industry, which has been lobbying for a waste storage site for more than 20 years, and President Bush, who has made expansion of nuclear power a prime goal of his energy policy. Employees at an Energy Department office in Las Vegas erupted in whoops and cheers after the vote.

Bush endorsed the Yucca Mountain plan in February, reversing the Clinton administration’s course of delay. Bush’s predecessor, in fact, vetoed a plan for storing waste at Yucca Mountain two years ago.

With Tuesday’s action, Nevada’s attempt to block the new federal plan through a gubernatorial veto in April was overridden. The administration now can apply for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the facility. It would open, if all goes as planned, in roughly a decade.

The White House had no immediate comment on the Senate action. Earlier, the administration released a statement urging approval of the plan as “important to a number of critical national interests, including national security, energy security, homeland security and protection of the environment.”

But opponents still plan to fight every step of the way--in government agencies and in court.

“The U.S. Senate vote today is the beginning of Nevada’s legal and regulatory fight to stop the Yucca Mountain project,” said Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican. Although the congressional action does not guarantee that nuclear waste will be stored at Yucca Mountain, it shifted the debate significantly. Now the government and the nuclear industry can plan on the assumption that a permanent repository for up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste is moving forward.

Had Congress failed to act, the plan--in the works since 1982--would have died.

That outcome would have been devastating to an industry that fell from public favor after a dangerous accident in 1979 at a power plant in Pennsylvania. The Three Mile Island incident helped spur the cancellation of plans for many new nuclear power plants; others have since been closed.

Although nuclear power supplies about 20% of all electricity generated in the United States through reactors at 103 plants, the Bush administration noted last year in its energy policy report that no new plant construction has been successfully ordered since 1973.

Opponents of nuclear power have long argued that plans for expanding nuclear plants should be shelved because there is no place to put radioactive waste. Now the industry can parry that argument.

“This is another piece of evidence that the nuclear industry is alive and well and likely to prosper in years to come,” said Jay Silberg, an attorney in Washington for several nuclear utilities.

Lawmakers who back nuclear power said Congress must support a waste-storage plan if the industry is to survive. Currently, spent fuel rods are accumulating at 131 sites in 39 states.

“I know how hard it is to explain to people this can be done in a safe and responsible way,” said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the minority leader, whose own state dodged designation as a potential waste-storage site in the 1980s. “But we have to deal with it. And if we don’t take this action, we don’t deal with it, then we’re going to have to shut down this source of energy in the country, slowly but surely. And I think that would be a mistake.”

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) denounced the plan, saying nuclear waste will continue to pile up around the country even if the Yucca project goes forward. Waving a government document angrily on the Senate floor, he said: “This piece of trash--that’s what it is--is typical of what the Department of Energy has done. It’s one big lie after one big lie.”

Much of the debate centered on whether the waste could be moved safely. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) showed maps of Sacramento and Los Angeles, pointing to routes--near schools, hospitals and the homes of millions of people--that she said could soon be used to move the waste. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Boxer said, “you would think this administration would think twice or three times or six times before they give the order for this waste to move.”

Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) replied that transportation plans remained undecided.

In the critical procedural vote, Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) joined 33 other Democrats and independent Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont in opposition to the plan. Just three Republicans opposed it: Sens. John Ensign of Nevada, Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Nevada, which has spent $3 million on advertising to defeat the plan, is not giving up. It has already filed a handful of federal lawsuits to fight the project. More are coming.

“We’re real confident about our legal cases,” said Bob Loux, who heads Nevada’s nuclear energy office. “We only have to win one of those cases, and any one of them is fatal to the process. The government has to win them all.”

Attorneys hired by the state said they will attack the plan on legal, environmental, technical and procedural fronts.

“The real battle will be in the courts and before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where we’ll find a level of objectivity you’ll never find in the political arena,” said Joseph R. Egan, one of the state’s lawyers.

One lawsuit challenges the adequacy of the government’s environmental impact statement--specifically whether it has sufficiently studied the possibility of radioactive leakage from Yucca Mountain. A lawsuit under consideration would challenge the constitutionality of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the 1982 law that led to the Yucca Mountain plan.

In Washington, the issue now moves from Capitol Hill to the Bush administration. The Department of Energy’s application for the Yucca Mountain site is due to be submitted to go before the NRC within three months.

In a preliminary review, the NRC has already raised 293 technical and scientific issues “where additional information is needed,” said Sue Gagner, an agency spokeswoman. The department has not yet replied to all of the questions, she said.

The issues generally deal with how water flows through Yucca Mountain, the effect heat would have on the water, how nuclear waste containers will withstand corrosion and how radioactive materials will be transported--both across country to reach Nevada and within the mountain itself.

The NRC’s review, expected to last four years, will be conducted by its staff and consultants and will include public hearings in Nevada.

Some in Nevada say the state should simply prepare for the arrival of nuclear waste.

“It’s time that Nevada begins to openly talk about Plan B,” said Robert List, who served as the state’s GOP governor from 1979 to 1983 and who was hired by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade organization, to smooth the waters in his home state.

“This will be the world’s largest public works project,” List said of Yucca Mountain, expected to cost upward of $70 billion. “Surely, we ought to seize the opportunity to make lemons into lemonade.” The state may also be in line for federal impact funds.

Anderson reported from Washington and Gorman from Las Vegas.