Key GOP senators back off Nevada as site for interim waste storage

Friday, March 9, 2001 | 11:35 a.m.

Republican senators who in the past have pushed an effort for temporary storage of high-level nuclear waste in Nevada before scientific studies of the permanent Yucca Mountain repository are completed now say they will not press for the interim measure.

Sens. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, are supporting an energy package that attempts to revive nuclear power, but neither Republican has an appetite for moving the wastes 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, they said this week.

Nevada's entire congressional delegation has opposed storing the nuclear waste in Nevada.

"That's very good news," David Cherry, a press secretary for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.

There is no current bill seeking interim storage in Nevada before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Murkowski, a committee staffer said. However, a proposal could emerge later in the year, he said.

The senators said this week that they will wait until the site passes scientific muster before proposing further legislation.

Murkowski is busy with a major energy policy bill that encourages more drilling for oil and natural gas in the United States including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, revives nuclear power as a clean energy source and supports clean coal technology.

Until the White House takes action on Yucca Mountain, Murkowski and Craig said they would not submit further legislation.

Since 1994, the GOP leaders have attempted to pass temporary storage legislation three times, but the efforts failed because the supporters could not muster enough votes to override a veto by the president. Current law prohibits storing high-level nuclear waste in Nevada as long as Yucca Mountain is under study.

The Energy Department has been studying Yucca Mountain for more than 15 years as the site to bury 77,000 tons of commercial and defense wastes. If approved, it will take until 2010 at the earliest before any facility is open.

In December the Sun reported in a copyrighted story that a two-page memo written with a 60-page report on the progress of DOE's study showed a bias toward approving the project. The memo explained how to sell the site to Congress despite mounting costs that could top $58 billion to build and operate the repository.

Federal law requires that the DOE remain objective until the repository site receives final approval.

Instead of releasing the report to Congress at the end of the year, the DOE delayed action while investigations into the memo are conducted. The DOE's inspector general and the General Accounting Office are investigating the bias allegations, delaying any site recommendation until at least the end of the year.

Republican congressional leaders also are saying they don't plan to overturn any more environmental regulations passed in the waning days of the Clinton administration.

But Craig said battles on environmental regulations are unlikely.

President Bush imposed a 30-day hold on all last-minute regulations passed by the Clinton administration so his administration could review each action.

The senators said they probably cannot review all of the new regulations by a May 15 deadline. A law allows the measures to become effective then.