Commonwealth Edison supports plan to keep material out of Nevada

Wednesday, March 31, 1999 | 10:36 a.m.

The nation's largest nuclear utility is getting behind a plan that would keep temporary storage of radioactive waste out of Nevada.

Commonwealth Edison and two other utilities are supporting the Department of Energy's plan, which would give the utilities money to keep the wastes at reactor sites while the DOE completes studies of a proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

A deal between the DOE and Commonwealth Edison and the other two utilities would strike a serious blow to the nuclear industry's lobbying efforts for temporary storage in Nevada, industry representatives said.

The nuclear-power lobby has been pushing legislation in Congress to create a temporary repository at the Nevada Test Site as soon as 2003. President Clinton vetoed such legislation last year and has vowed to do so again if the legislation passes this year.

A Commonwealth Edison spokesman said the DOE proposal is the first alternative to a temporary storage site that the federal government has offered. Although the wastes would remain at 73 reactor sites around the country until a permanent solution is found, the DOE would take legal responsibility for the waste.

Commonwealth Edison, which serves customers primarily in Illinois, has not entered into formal negotiations with the DOE for interim storage, but the company supports the approach offered by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in February, a spokesman said.

Wisconsin Energy of Milwaukee and PECO of Philadelphia also joined ComEd in expressing support for Richardson's offer.

As it is, a vote to force the DOE to move the wastes could fail again this year because there is not enough support in the Senate to override a presidential veto.

"ComEd appreciates the administration's willingness to work with stakeholders on resolving the problem," ComEd spokesman Don Kirchoffner said from Chicago on Tuesday.

However, Richardson's proposal did not offer enough detail for the company to assess it, Kirchoffner said. And the utility is keeping its options open by supporting the legislation for temporary storage in Nevada as well.

"This is the first time the DOE has made an offer," Wisconsin Energy spokeswoman Maureen Brown said. "We are reserving judgment until we see something detailed."

The utilities have praised Richardson's idea in public and to the DOE, said an article in Monday's Electricity Daily, an industry newsletter.

The outspoken support offered by ComEd and the other utilities has angered the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, which has supported the temporary nuclear waste storage bills before Congress.

Institute spokesman Steve Unglesbee brushed aside the utilities' interest in an on-site storage program. "We are focused on temporary nuclear-waste legislation in the House and Senate," he said.

The most important issue to the nuclear industry is getting rid of an estimated 35,000 tons of radioactive waste stacked at reactors across the country, Unglesbee said. That amount is expected to reach 70,000 tons by 2010, when federal officials hope to have a permanent repository ready.

The utilities, on the other hand, are facing enormous costs for shipping radioactive wastes through 43 states to temporary storage in Nevada. And if the Yucca Mountain repository fails scientific tests, the utilities would have to move the waste again.

Richardson has said the DOE's solution of temporary on-site storage of the nuclear waste would mean major savings for the utilities.

The on-site storage solution also allows the DOE to fund and finish studies for a proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Richardson said.

If the DOE is forced to move the nuclear wastes and finish Yucca Mountain at the same time, that could bankrupt the nuclear-waste fund, Richardson said. Nuclear utility customers pay into a fund containing $8 billion for research and development of a repository. The government has already spent $6 billion on Yucca Mountain studies.

Yucca Mountain will not be ready for permanent disposal until 2010, if then. Scientists have recently expressed doubts about the old volcano's stability and whether water can travel so swiftly through the mountain that people could be exposed to radiation much sooner than expected.

The DOE also is trying to avoid further monetary damages from a series of lawsuits filed by nuclear utilities to force the government to take the wastes. The industry claims the DOE reneged on its promise to take the waste away from utility sites by 1998.

The DOE countered that there was no formal agreement to accept the nuclear waste unless a permanent repository had been approved.

Federal court decisions in the past year have favored the utilities but have not ordered the DOE to remove waste from reactor sites immediately.