Nuke bill waiting game continues

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Nov. 4, 1999 | 10:21 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The tense waiting game on a bill that would ship nuclear waste to Nevada as early as 2007 continues in Congress.

Congress is trying to complete this year's session by Wednesday in part because that's when a number of senators have made plans to leave on trips, some outside the country. But President Clinton has not signed several spending bills that Congress is reworking.

If Congress members finish their work by Wednesday, they likely will adjourn, and the nuclear waste bill will die for the year, said Tina Kreisher, a spokeswoman for Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the primary supporter of the nuke waste bill.

But if Congress misses the Wednesday deadline, "all bets are off," Kreisher said. "We could be here 'til Christmas."

That means the Senate could make time to debate the bill that speeds up a timetable for shipments of 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to a permanent repository inside Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid have battled nuclear waste bills for years. They have threatened to delay a vote on the latest bill with endless debate -- souring the appetite among other senators to tackle the issue this year. The Nevada senators say a vote on the bill is pointless because President Bill Clinton has threatened to veto it.

Bryan and Reid have been waiting nervously this week to see if the bill's supporters would file cloture on the bill, which limits debate and ends a filibuster.

"It certainly creates a lot of anxiety, but we are ready whenever they make their move," Bryan said today. "But we just don't know when that will be."

Reid today said that Sen. Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., told him yesterday that he could still file a cloture motion today.

"We'll just show them that we have 34 votes," needed to sustain a veto, Reid said.