Bryan, Reid set to block nuke waste bill debate

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Monday, Nov. 1, 1999 | 11:14 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., are ready to block debate this week on a bill that would bring nuclear waste to Nevada as early as 2007.

It is unclear whether Republicans, who back the bill, will push to bring the debate to the floor today or later this week.

The debate likely would be lengthy at a time when Congress members are caught in a flurry of legislation under a tight deadline. They are trying to wrap up the session this week or next so they can head home for the holidays.

Reid and Bryan are keeping a close eye on the clock and the Senate agenda. Both pledge to use a filibuster if necessary to block debate on the bill.

Reid gave Senate colleagues a taste of the ammunition he is ready to throw out during a filibuster on Friday during comments on the Senate floor.

For every Amargosa Valley farmer who dies from cancer caused by radioactive water escaping Yucca Mountain, the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository, three children will die, he told fellow senators.

The legislation, authored by Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission instead of the Environmental Protection Agency the responsibility of setting standards at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The bill also would bring highly radioactive waste to the mountain by 2007, three years before the opening of a proposed repository.

Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied as a potential dump for 77,000 tons of spent fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants and other radioactive defense waste. Truckloads of waste would pass by 50 million people in 43 states before arriving at Yucca Mountain.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a limit of 4 millirems -- about half a chest X-ray of radiation -- to be allowed to escape the mountain through the ground water. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not limit radiation in ground water, preferring to wrap the limit of what can escape through ground water into a total 25 millirem limit per year of escaped radiation.

Murkowski admitted on Friday that his bill was aimed at shifting responsibility for radiation standards to the NRC, because if the EPA limit goes into effect, the repository can be killed on that one issue.

"If they set a standard for ground water, this thing is through," Murkowski said.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., did not commit to a hearing schedule on Murkowski's bill, but because it is on the Senate's calendar Lott could call it up for debate. However, the Senate must deal with labor and education budget bills and bankruptcy reform before it can tackle nuclear waste. Capitol Hill staffers say Lott is eager to end the session by Nov. 10 and head home.

"Obviously, the less time we are here, the less time they would have to bring (the bill) forward," Reid spokesman David Cherry said this morning. "We're ready. We have our charts on stand by. We're ready to go on a minute's notice."

Reid said Friday the cancer mortality statistic he quoted on the Senate floor came from a report, "Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation V," provided to him by Murkowski's staff. In the report, published in 1991, a team of radiation health experts gathered by the National Research Council made recommendations on safe levels of exposure to radiation. Such studies have been done five times since the report was first commissioned in 1947 to review threats from radiation exposure -- and each update has recommended lower levels than the previous one.

"What we've never talked about before is the standards," Reid said following the three-hour debate on the Senate floor on Friday.

"We've always talked about adult standards," he said. "We've never talked about kids."

The health standards proposed in Murkowski's bill are calculated based on an average exposure to an adult male farmer standing 12 miles away from a Yucca Mountain repository.

"But with children, because they are more vulnerable, we are in a real interesting situation," Reid said. "There will be children living in the shadow of Yucca Mountain. We are talking about something that kills people."

"This legislation is pure, naked special interest legislation," Bryan said Friday. Bryan and Reid said they were prepared to delay the Senate for a week or more if the nuclear waste bill, which President Clinton has promised to veto, comes to the floor.