Revised Yucca bill nearly complete

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Feb. 3, 2000 | 10:47 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate sponsor of a bill that could bring 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to Nevada is scrambling today to finalize key amendments, aides said.

Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, hopes to put finishing touches on the bill so that debate in the Senate can begin next week, spokeswoman Tina Kreisher said.

Murkowski plans to give Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., a peek at the amended nuclear waste bill today or Friday.

"It's still changing," Kreisher said. "They will get it as soon as we get all our i's dotted. We're making no attempt to keep it from them."

The bill outlines some of the rules for shipping 77,000 tons of the nation's nuclear waste, now stored at nuclear power plants nationwide, to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Bryan and Reid oppose the bill. They are especially concerned that Murkowski's bill would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to set levels for allowable radiation released from waste stored at Yucca.

The Nevada senators want the Environmental Protection Agency to set the standards because it standards are more strict. President Clinton has threatened to veto the bill unless the EPA sets the standards.

In recent days Murkowski has been drafting amendments to the bill in an attempt to gain Clinton's approval, Kreisher said.

Murkowski spoke by phone this morning with Clinton's point man on the issue, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who is traveling in Lithuania.

The new bill would forge a kind of partnership between the EPA, NRC and the National Academy of Sciences, in setting the standards, Kreisher said. Kreisher would not confirm that the EPA would play the lead role under the amended bill.

"All three would be involved," she said.

Bryan and Reid are eager to get an advance copy of the bill.

"Obviously, we would have been severely handicapped in our efforts to oppose this legislation if we did not have the ability to review the legislation before the rest of the Senate," Bryan said in a written statement.

The Nevada senators have a number of other objections to the bill. They also plan to argue the bill endangers millions of Americans in 43 states who live near the transportation routes that trucks and trains would use to haul waste to Nevada.

"The safety of 50 million Americans and their communities could be put in jeopardy because of attempts to ram through this misguided legislation," Reid said in a statement.

Murkowski has no nuclear power plants or waste in his state and said he is pursuing the bill because of his position as chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which oversee nuclear energy issues.

Murkowski has receive substantial campaign contributions from nuclear energy organizations and related industries, who are pushing the Yucca Mountain dump.