Bryan, Reid stir up veto debate

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, May 2, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sharp words were exchanged in the Senate today as Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., urged the rest of the Senate to sustain President Clinton's veto of a bill that would speed up shipments of nuclear waste to Nevada.

A vote on the veto was scheduled for 12:15 p.m. Las Vegas time today and at least 32 senators -- the number needed to sustain a presidential veto -- were expected to vote with Nevada's senators.

"I feel confident," Bryan said during a break in debate this morning. "We're going to get the votes to sustain the veto."

Reid and Bryan this morning traded barbs with several senators who support the bill and were attempting to override Clinton's veto. But even the bill's primary sponsor, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, admitted, "We anticipate approximately 65 votes," two short of what he needed.

"I say that the president is wrong," Murkowski said. "He's wrong for the environment. He's wrong for the country. He's wrong for energy policy. He's wrong for national security."

Murkowski is a strong advocate for burying the nation's nuclear waste -- eventually 77,000 tons of the highly radioactive material -- at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Murkowski led the fight to pass the latest nuclear waste bill in Congress, which would speed up shipments of the waste to Nevada by at least 2007, three years before the waste repository deep below Yucca would be complete.

The Senate and House passed the bill this year, but Clinton vetoed it April 25, in part because he thought the timetable was unreasonable. Clinton also said the bill took authority away from the Environmental Protection Agency to set safety standards at Yucca.

Murkowski blasted Clinton for rejecting the bill.

"The president's veto wasn't based on good science, it was based on crass politics," Murkowski said today. "It's simply clear that the administration doesn't want to take up this matter under any circumstances and deal with it on their watch."

Murkowski said that without a single nuclear waste dump, the nation's nuclear industry was in peril. Nuclear power plants nationwide produce roughly 20 percent of the nation's energy, industry officials say. Murkowski has said power plants were "choking" on their own nuclear waste.

Murkowski points to the U.S. Department of Energy, which made a contractual agreement with nuclear utilities to haul the waste away by 1998. Now some utilities are suing the government.

Murkowski added that a statement released by presidential candidate Al Gore supporting Clinton's veto was evidence that the Yucca plan was driven by politics, not science.

Bryan and Reid tried to poke holes in Murkowski's arguments, saying that scientists have not deemed Yucca a suitable site. They said they EPA should have sole authority to set radiation standards for Yucca.

At one point during debate Reid even dismissed Murkowski's visual aid, a display photo of the Nevada Test Site, which Murkowski said was the dump site.

"The Nevada Test Site is not Yucca Mountain," Reid said.

Reid, who has argued that transporting nuclear waste to Nevada was dangerous to Americans nationwide, had a few visual aids of his own.

At one point he displayed a giant photo of a railroad accident in Oregon. Reid said senators and the American people should be worried about nuclear waste traveling by train across the United States on its way to Nevada.

'If this doesn't send chills down your spine, nothing would," Reid said. "Accidents happen on the railways all the time."

Murkowski dismissed such arguments as "fear mongering."

Reid also answered a question often lofted by critics: what should be done with the waste, if not bury it forever in Nevada?

"There's an easy answer," Reid said. "You store it on site. The odds are very good that if you store it on site it will be safe."

Nuclear power plants won't do that because the "very powerful, greedy nuclear power industry" wanted to get rid of its waste, Reid said.

"They don't want any responsibility for the poison they created," Reid said.

Consistent with past debates, Nevada's senators were outnumbered in the debate today. Several other senators joined Murkowski.

"The president is making a very big mistake for the nation's future," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who wants to ship nuclear waste in his state to Nevada, also delivered a message to the president, "You failed once again to do the right thing for your party and the country," Craig said. "Why create a problem when you can solve a problem with a single location, a permanent, deep geological repository that is environmentally safe and sound for all under the most stringent of laws?"

Both Bryan and Reid praised Clinton. "Every American, regardless of his or her politics, should be proud of the president's position," Bryan said.

Benjamin Grove covers Washington for the Sun. He can be reached at (202) 628-3100 ext. 269 or by e-mail at grove@lasvegassun.com