Nuclear issue on hold until next year

Benjamin Grove

Friday, March 24, 2000 | 11:22 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The congressman who likely will lead the charge on the next nuclear waste-to-Nevada bill said Thursday that he won't push the measure this year.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, told the Sun that he would wait until next year when a new president inhabits the White House before sending any more Yucca Mountain legislation to the House floor.

"I think one nuclear waste bill is enough for the House to deal with," said Barton, chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on energy and power. "We've got a president who doesn't want to deal with the problem."

Barton's comments came one day after the House passed a bill, 253-167, that would send high-level radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by 2007. The Senate passed the bill last month, but President Clinton is expected to veto it.

The bill's most vocal Senate supporter on Thursday pleaded with fellow senators to override the veto, which is not likely.

"I would encourage my colleagues to recognize that we have a responsibility to address this on our watch," Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said on the Senate floor. "Now is the time because we have, finally, a bill."

Scientists are studying Yucca Mountain to determine if it is a suitable place to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, mostly spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors, now stored in pools and canisters at the power plants nationwide. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ultimately will decide whether Yucca will be licensed as a waste site.

Meanwhile, Congress has been trying to pass legislation that would establish transportation plans, radiation standards and a schedule for waste shipments by truck and train to Nevada.

Barton, a longtime advocate of the Yucca plan, has led the effort to pass a bill that would bring nuclear waste to Nevada by 2003. He did not support the bill passed Wednesday. Barton prefers his bill because it directs federal money to pay for temporary storage of waste at Yucca beginning as early as 2003 until about 2010, when Yucca's waste caverns are expected to be completed.

Barton's bill also directs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not the Environmental Protection Agency, to determine what is a safe level of radiation emitted by waste stored at Yucca. Barton thinks the EPA standards are unnecessarily strict.

"They're (NRC) better qualified (than the EPA)," Barton said. "They have been monitoring nuclear reactors and construction for 40 years. They have some pretty good scientists and they've got a standard they are comfortable with."

Barton said Yucca is the only solution to the problem of waste that has been stockpiled at nuclear power plants for years.

"The science has proven that it's a safe depository site," Barton said. "I think that Nevadans know deep down in their hearts that the waste is going to be placed at Yucca. It's not so much a question of if as it is of when."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., countered, "If it's so safe, let him bury it where his children live, not where my children live." She pointed out that Deaf Smith County, Texas, was one of three finalists in the 1980s for the nuclear waste dump before Yucca was chosen.

Berkley said Barton's statements indicated that lawmakers pushing the nuclear waste legislation were "on the defensive and trying to regroup."

Rep. Jim Gibbons plans to lobby George W. Bush on the issue next year, should Bush become president, Gibbons' chief-of-staff Michael Dayton said.

"This is good news that Joe Barton has thrown in the towel," Dayton said. "We fully expect that no matter who is president that this issue will come up again next year. The nuclear industry is not going to give in and we're never going to give in. This fight will continue for several years."

Benjamin Grove covers Washington D.C. for the Sun. He can be reached at (202) 628-3100 ext. 268 or by e-mail at benjamingrove@yahoo.com.