Clinton promises to veto nuke waste bill, senators say

Robert Macy

Friday, Oct. 1, 1999 | 3:57 a.m.

Nevada's two senators said Friday they won a critical veto commitment from President Clinton on their flight from Washington, D.C. to Las Vegas.

Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, both D-Nev., said Clinton promised to veto a bill which calls for a high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.

The bill contains a provision which would allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rather than the Environmental Protection Agency to set radiation standards for the waste dump. Nevada officials contend the EPA would set much more stringent standards and have pushed Clinton for a promise to veto any bill that lets the NRC set the standards.

"This president has stood with Nevada from the beginning," Bryan said.

He gave a thumbs-up when asked if Clinton had promised a veto.

Both senators said they think the nuclear waste bill may now be dead because it takes 67 senators to override any veto. They said the pro-nuclear forces do not have those numbers, although the vote is expected to be close.

"We don't want to declare victory until victory is here," Reid said.

Both Reid and Bryan said they had talked Thursday with White House chief of staff John Podesta and he had told them it was likely Clinton would give them the veto commitment.

Bryan said the president told them at one point "I am with you" as they discussed the waste issue.

Asked how they thought the nuclear industry would greet Clinton's veto promise, Bryan said: "In nuclear parlance, they'll go critical."

Nevada's congressional delegation has credited a threatened Clinton veto with killing an earlier bill that would have placed nuclear waste at the Nevada Test Site until a permanent facility was approved at Yucca Mountain sometime after the turn of the century.

With the interim storage bill dead, the Nevada delegation has been working feverishly with Clinton for a veto on the current Yucca Mountain permanent storage bill.

The federal government is seeking an answer as to where to store upwards of 70,000 tons of nuclear waste now collecting at the nation's nuclear power plants. The nuclear power industry has been pushing Congress and the Department of Energy for a bill that would solve the storage problem.

Reid and Bryan flew out to Las Vegas with Clinton for a $10,000-a-plate fund-raising luncheon for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Reid, assistant Senate minority leader, said he and Bryan talked with the president for nearly an hour on the trip aboard Air Force One, with only a couple of minutes of the discussion centering on the Yucca Mountain bill.