Murkowski to unveil nuke waste proposal

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Feb. 4, 2000 | 11:27 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The sponsor of an ever-changing bill that could bring 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to Nevada was to unveil today an amended version aimed at winning the approval of the Senate and President Clinton next week.

Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, released advance copies on Thursday of a dramatically different version of his previously introduced bill. The new bill makes a major concession to Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev.

The newest bill requires that the Environmental Protection Agency, not the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to set the standards for safe levels of radiation emitted by nuclear waste that would be stored inside Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Murkowski in previous bill drafts had required that the NRC set the standards.

Bryan and Reid had called for the EPA to set the standards because EPA standards are stricter. The Nevada senators hope the EPA standards are so strict that they disqualify Yucca Mountain as a site for a nuclear waste dump. Reid and Bryan, who have vowed to fight the bill no matter what form it takes, could not be reached for immediate comment today.

"Certainly, that portion of the bill would be a victory," Reid spokesman Mark Schuermann said. "The standards will be so strict that they will never be able to meet them."

President Clinton has sided with the Nevada senators on the EPA issue. Reid and Bryan have said they secured 34 votes in the 100-member Senate to sustain the veto. Clinton on Thursday reaffirmed his veto threat in a statement, but it was not immediately clear today how Clinton would view the new amended bill.

The senators have been counting on Clinton's veto as a means to kill the whole bill, but now that Murkowski has compromised on that issue, the strategy is in question.

Murkowski spokeswoman Tina Kreisher said he was tinkering with certain provisions and may release a final version by the end of today. She said the purpose of the amended bill was to earn Clinton's approval.

"More immediately, we want to get the members of the Senate to vote for it," Kreisher said.

Yucca Mountain in 1987 was chosen to be the nation's nuclear waste storage site, although studies are on-going there to determine the plan's feasibility.

Murkowski's bill establishes rules for shipping 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, now stored at nuclear power plants across the nation, to Yucca beginning in 2007.

Power plant operators have heavily lobbied Congress, saying its too expensive, and ultimately not safe, to continue storing their own waste.

Debate on the bill is expected to begin Tuesday afternoon and continue through Wednesday. A final vote likely would immediately follow.

Reid and Bryan anxiously awaited Murkowski's amended bill all week as Murkowski scrambled to draft a final version the Senate would pass. Murkowski on Thursday morning called Clinton cabinet member Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, reaching him by phone in Europe, to discuss the compromise bill.

EPA officials say the waste decaying inside Yucca should release no more than a level of 15 millirem of radiation, with a separate 4 millirem standard for ground water. The NRC says a 25 millirem release is safe, even for ground water.

"There are no compromises when the NRC and the EPA get together," Bryan said Thursday. "You have a built-in impasse."

In related news on Thursday, the nuclear industry's chief lobbying firm, the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute, blasted the state of Nevada for refusing to provide the Department of Energy water to continue projects and studies at Yucca projects. State Engineer Mike Turnipseed Thursday released the 24-page ruling rejecting water request.

NEI's vice president John Kane responded that "Nevada's long record of obstructionism" to Yucca underscores the need for Congress to force the Yucca waste dump with federal laws.

"The state's decision to deny water permits for the Yucca Mountain project is clear evidence that Nevada is continuing to thwart, by all possible means, this important national program to safely manage nuclear byproducts from the nation's energy and defense activities," Kane said in a statement.

"To turn off the spigot as these studies are coming to fruition is irresponsible for the public interest and environment of this nation."