Nuke bill opponents plan veto ceremony

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, April 19, 2000 | 11:25 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's staff is scrambling to put together a veto ceremony, possibly Thursday, for a bill that would speed shipments of nuclear waste to Nevada.

Republicans last week held a ceremony of their own to celebrate the bill passing both the House and Senate. They shipped the legislation to Clinton urging him to sign it.

But Clinton plans to reject the bill, which officially hit his desk Friday, giving him until April 26 -- 10 days excluding Sundays -- to veto or sign it.

The bill would launch shipments of nuclear waste to Nevada as early as 2007. A federal plan calls for the eventual shipment of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel rods to be entombed at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for 10,000 years or more. Meanwhile, scientists are still studying whether Yucca is a suitable place to bury waste.

The waste is now stored at the nuclear power plants nationwide where the hazardous material is produced.

Clinton has said the bill limits the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate safety standards at Yucca and demands unrealistic timelines for establishing the dump. Clinton also has concerns about the transportation of the waste to Nevada.

But a majority of Congress approved the bill. On April 11 House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., along with Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and several other Republican supporters of the bill held an "enrollment ceremony" for the bill, a somewhat unusual official send-off for legislation bound for the president's desk.

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., has talked to Clinton Chief-of-Staff John Podesta about a holding a high-profile veto ceremony to answer the Republican leadership, a Bryan spokesman said. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., also has been in contact with the White House, trying to work out the details for the ceremony. If it can be arranged, the ceremony could come as early as Thursday or possibly early next week.

The four-member Nevada delegation is in the state this week during a congressional break. Clinton, also, has been traveling.

"It's a matter of coordinating schedules," Bryan spokesman David Lemmon said.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., on Tuesday released an indignant written statement, "The Republican leadership in Congress was tacky enough to hold a whole dog-and-pony show when they sent the bill to the president -- they actually celebrated the fact that they were screwing Nevada.

"My joining the president for the veto ceremony is intended to send a clear message to Washington Republicans that we are 110 percent committed to burying this bill in its own little dump under Denny Hastert's desk."