Nevadans pleased by Senate vote on Yucca bill, focus shifts to House

Saturday, Feb. 12, 2000 | 9:54 a.m.

The Senate passed its version of the bill 64-34 Thursday - but President Clinton threatened a veto and 34 Senate votes would sustain it.

With the Senate version likely doomed for the year, it's not clear whether the House will bother tackling the issue until a new president is elected.

"There have been no discussions that I have heard on whether this bill will be taken up," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev. "Certainly, I see it as not being a productive use of time."

The House and Senate bills greatly differ. The Senate bill establishes guidelines for shipping 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste, now stored at defense centers and commercial nuclear power plants nationwide, to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The waste would be permanently buried in the mountain.

A House bill allows nuclear waste to be temporarily stored at the Nevada Test Site, roughly 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. And the Republican-controlled House also could simply vote on the Senate version of the bill.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., spoke Thursday with Minority leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., who pledged to fight a bill should it come to the House floor.

"How much appetite there is to move this bill, whether they would do anything with it, remains to be seen," Berkley spokesman Richard Urey said.

Reaction came swiftly to Thursday's Senate vote, considered a victory by Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., who fought the bill.

Gov. Kenny Guinn was "proud and pleased" and will now turn his attention to the House, spokesman Jack Finn said.

"We're encouraged by the fact that we have maintained enough votes to sustain a veto," Finn said. "Suffice to say, he's watching the situation closely."

Nevada's Yucca pointman said state officials were relieved that the Senate bill seemed dead for now.

"For six years in a row, they have tried to force bad legislation to essentially make Yucca Mountain work and abrogate health and safety standards, and common sense has prevailed," said Bob Loux, Executive Director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, which oversees the Department of Energy's Yucca studies.

Loux keeps tabs on the DOE, which has been studying Yucca Mountain to determine whether it is a suitable site for storing waste. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ultimately will approve or deny the Yucca proposal.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson didn't back the Senate bill, in part because it didn't allow the DOE to pay for monitoring the waste as it now sits at power plants across the country.

Richardson saw the monitoring as a way to deal with mounting lawsuits filed by power plants against the DOE because the government had promised to haul waste to Yucca by 1998.

Richardson also said "toothless" radiation standards outlined by the bill have been weakened so badly that they pose a threat to Nevada.

"We want Nevadans to be protected under the standard. I will recommend a veto to the president. President Clinton and Vice President Gore are responsible for the vote yesterday," Richardson said.