GOP seeks more nuke plants

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001 | 11:08 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republican leaders are preparing a sweeping 259-page energy bill that includes a strategy to increase nuclear power production nationwide. The plan even calls for America to reconsider building nuclear plants.

"Consumers want power," Senate Energy Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said today about the energy crisis in California. "New power plants have to be built."

Building new plants and increasing nuclear power production concern Nevada officials because the state has been targeted as site of the nation's nuclear waste dump.

"There are many pieces of this bill that concern us, not the least of which is the creation of one or more new plants," David Cherry, spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said. "What do you do when you create all that new waste -- shove it in Yucca Mountain, too? That raises a whole new set of scientific questions."

A 1987 bill approved by Congress designated Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the permanent burial site for highly radioactive waste. Completion of the repository is scheduled for 2010 pending results of scientific studies, a lengthy approval process and construction.

The bill mentions the Nevada site in a section that irks Reid because it assumes a Yucca repository will open, Cherry said.

"They are looking right past Nevada as if this were a done deal," Cherry said.

The section reads, "Prior to permanent closure of the geologic repository in Yucca Mountain, Congress must determine whether the spent fuel in the repository should be treated as waste subject to permanent burial or should be considered an energy resource that is needed to meet future energy requirements; future use of nuclear energy may require construction of a second geologic repository unless Yucca Mountain can safely accommodate additional spent fuel."

"At every turn, these people are moving forward with a plan predicated on the assumption that Yucca Mountain will be approved," Cherry said.

Murkowski could not be reached for comment this morning. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., has not yet seen the bill, a spokeswoman said.

The bill, crafted mostly by Murkowski in cooperation with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., outlines numerous strategies to increase power supplies nationwide. The goal: decrease dependency on foreign oil by 50 percent by 2010 by increasing production, conservation and energy efficiency.

The nation now gets 56 percent of its oil from other countries, Murkowski said. Energy demand in the United States is expected to rise 27 percent by 2020, the bill states.

The bill, obtained by the Sun, is scheduled for early February release. Its most controversial tenet addresses drilling on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, part of President Bush's campaign platform.

"I can't overemphasize how important it is for this nation to develop energy supplies," Bush said in a Reuters interview last week.

Republican leaders in Congress have repeatedly slammed the Clinton administration for not devising a comprehensive energy policy. Now they plan to quickly push their strategy as Congress gets to work under the watch of a Republican president.

The legislation contains a diverse list of other energy shortage solutions. The bill calls for boosts in coal, gas and oil production, as well as increased reliance on alternative energy sources, such as the sun, wind and heat from inside the Earth. The bill outlines tax incentives for vehicles that run on a combination of electricity and gasoline. It calls for studies of domestic oil refining; dams and hydroelectric power; and establishes energy-efficient school programs, among other tactics.

Murkowski also wants to increase nuclear energy output. The nation's 103 nuclear reactors are the source of roughly 20 percent of the country's electricity. Several plants, which took years to complete, opened in the 1990s. But the last nuclear power plant ordered for construction was commissioned in the early 1970s, in part due to public concerns about nuclear waste and the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident.

The nuclear energy section of the bill establishes a Nuclear Energy Research Initiative with a $45 million budget for 2002, to be managed by the Office of Nuclear Energy. The office would offer incentives to the most productive and efficient nuclear plants and launch a program designed to open a new nuclear plant.

The bill also:

Republican leaders in the House, while backing a comprehensive energy strategy, are taking a more cautious legislative route than the ambitious, wide-ranging Senate plan.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., and Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, plan hearings, aides said.

It was not immediately clear how Bush views the unreleased legislation, a spokesman said today.