8 days in June critical to future of temporary storage in Nevada

Paul Kane

Wednesday, May 20, 1998 | 10:07 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The fate of plans to store high-level nuclear waste in Las Vegas' backyard could hinge on eight critical days of debate early next month.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi had wanted to bring up the nuclear waste storage legislation two weeks ago. But it appears unlikely that a vote will come until Congress returns from its 10-day Memorial Day recess, according to supporters and opponents of the bill.

The industry and Department of Energy continue to feud over paying for nuclear waste storage, while House and Senate staff are negotiating a final bill that they hope can win passage with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.

If all goes as planned, Lott would introduce the bill to open a short-term storage site in Southern Nevada on the Senate floor at the end of this week and then adjourn for the recess, according to Derek Jumper, spokesman for Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the author of the nuclear waste bill.

Once Congress returns in early June, Nevada's senators, Democrats Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, would be able to stall the legislation for a couple of days before a vote to end their filibuster, Jumper and other supporters said.

From there, Murkowski, Lott and other supporters would need about eight days to debate numerous amendments to the controversial legislation, before a final vote on passage of the bill would be called some time around June 10.

If they ever get that far.

"When it's going to be, I don't know," Jumper said. "What (the bill) is going to look like, I don't know."

Those uncertainties, coming this late in the battle, have emboldened opponents of the bill, who believe that Murkowski is struggling to accommodate all of his supporters, leaving Lott concerned about debating the bill only to see it fail.

"I think Sen. Lott has been somewhat reserved and has said, 'Look, show me the votes before we bring it up.' By showing me the votes he wants 67 votes," Bryan said.

Clinton administration officials oppose the bill because opening a short-term site in Nevada -- before Energy Department officials can determine if Yucca Mountain is a safe permanent site -- could force the interim site to stay open much longer than Murkowski envisions.

When the House passed its version of the nuclear waste bill last year, 307-120, it easily cleared the two-thirds majority needed to override President Clinton's veto. The Senate, however, has so far only won 65 votes supporting the measure, two short of a veto override.

Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he and Rep. James Gibbons, R-Nev., have met with the Senate GOP leaders to ask them to drop the bill. "What we are doing is meeting with Trent Lott's people all the time and telling them 'you can't bring this up,'" Ensign said.

Because of the shortened congressional calendar in this mid-term election year, Murkowski has been negotiating with the House's leader on the issue, Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, R-Va., chairman of the House Commerce Committee. Murkowski and Bliley hope to craft one bill to pass through both houses, eliminating a lengthy House-Senate conference.

Jumper said the negotiations have been cumbersome, but Murkowski remains confident he will have a veto-proof majority. If the Senate gets more than 67 votes, the House would quickly pass the bill later this summer, making Nevada the nation's nuclear dump by early next century.

But opponents say they still have the votes to sustain the veto, and that the congressional calendar is becoming too crowded to bring up a controversial measure that will take eight days to pass -- unless Murkowski is 100 percent certain he has the 67 votes. This week, for example, the Senate will spend of most its time debating the tobacco legislation.

"There does become a time ... when it's futile to bring it up because of time constraints," said Michael Mariotte, a spokesman for Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington-based environmental group opposed to storing the waste in Nevada.

The industry, which rejected DOE's offer of $2.8 billion to $5 billion to pay for storing the high-level waste on site until a permanent site is opened, is increasing pressure on its allies in Congress to pass the legislation this summer -- which has their opponents on guard.

"The job ... needs to be finished," said Steve Ungelsbee, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

"We are prepared whenever it comes up," Reid said.

(States News Service reporter Mark Preston contributed to this report.)