For Yucca foes, Congress battle to get tougher

Benjamin Grove

Friday, April 26, 2002 | 5:17 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: April 28, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Virtually every major player in the epic struggle over Yucca Mountain was in the nation's capital last week for a flurry of action in the House.

If the long Yucca Mountain story was a play, this scene ended badly for Nevada officials, as they knew it would.

Votes in a House subcommittee Tuesday (24-2 favoring Yucca) and the full Energy Committee Thursday (41-6) left the nuclear industry in the spotlight.

Industry officials for years have scripted Yucca Mountain as a site scrutinized by years of scientific study and deemed safe for permanent waste storage by the nation's top experts.

The industry casts Yucca detractors, with Nevada officials in lead roles, as NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) pandering to an unjustified national anxiety over nuclear waste.

For Yucca opponents, the battle in Congress will get tougher: The full House likely will approve the project the week after next, setting up a showdown in the Senate, expected before the end of July.

The challenge for Nevada officials will be to keep their arguments on course now that the fight in the House is all but lost -- and to prepare for different audiences: the public, 100 members of the U.S. Senate, and federal judges.

State leaders hope they can rally public opinion to put pressure on the Senate. If not, a series of lawsuits in federal court could be the state's answer.

They are already looking forward to other acts. One will feature a vote in the Senate and the other will feature lawsuits in federal court. Here is how the plot advanced last week.

The curtain opened Tuesday on the House Energy and Commerce's subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, a small but important panel where energy -- and nuclear waste -- issues often originate in Congress.

The panel's task: vote on a simple, one-paragraph resolution to approve Yucca Mountain once and for all as the nation's nuclear waste dump. The panel held a hearing on the bill just five days prior.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, panel chairman, played a starring role. For him the vote was personal.

In 1981 and 1982, he had been a wide-eyed engineer from Waco in his early 30s working as a White House fellow in the Reagan Administration's policy and planning office.

Barton was a self-described low-level staffer, but with input into a new project proposal the White House was working out with Congress: finding a permanent geological repository for the nation's most radioactive waste.

Twenty years later, in his ninth term in the House, Barton found himself in charge of the first congressional panel to decide the fate of Yucca Mountain.

From behind half-rim reading glasses, Barton called on one panel member after another to make opening statements. They extolled the virtues of the Yucca site, and pleaded for the government to finish the project.

In the end, Barton's subcommittee approved Yucca overwhelmingly with just two dissenters -- Reps. Bill Luther, D-Minn., who later said he was employing "Midwestern common sense," and fiery debater and longtime nuclear industry foe Edward Markey, D-Mass.

That set up a vote Thursday in the full Energy committee. That body's chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., is another vocal proponent for the Yucca dump and the nuclear power industry, which gives generously to his campaigns.

The hearing room buzzed prior to Tauzin's opening gavel. Industry leaders, including a major nuclear waste container manufacturer and several industry lobbyists, gathered to watch. So did a few anti-Yucca activists, and a gaggle of reporters.

Some lawmakers made statements, mostly in favor of Yucca. A few said the Energy Department needed more time and more data to deem the site suitable.

"Unfortunately, the administration has rushed ahead of the science," Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said. "For the nuclear industry, the political stars have aligned this year. There are nuclear-friendly votes in the House and the White House. This is no way to adopt policy."

But other lawmakers said Yucca studies had dragged on too long and argued the site has been proven suitable. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., implored his colleagues to "get this issue behind us." Michigan is home to four nuclear reactors and a temporary waste site on the banks of Lake Michigan.

"I have been to Nevada, I have been to this particular site, and we have spent $12 billion -- B as in big -- preparing that site for this day," Upton said.

Tauzin called for a vote and a chorus of "ayes" rang out. A roll call vote told the tale: 41-6 in favor of Yucca.

Tauzin and Barton held a rare post-vote press conference, along with another key player, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

Abraham had put the DOE's stamp of approval on the project in February, which President Bush quickly endorsed.

Abraham also had testified at Barton's hearing to assure lawmakers that all unanswered technical questions about Yucca Mountain would be answered before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a waste license for the site.

"We certainly feel like it's in the best interest of the country to move ahead," Abraham told reporters.

The industry cheered. "This action highlights the broad support across regional, ideological and party lines and sends a strong signal that the federal government's used nuclear fuel management program should move forward expeditiously," said John Kane, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Minutes later, in another hearing room in the same House office building, Nevada's top political leaders -- and two aspiring ones -- were assembled at a witness table.

The House Transportation Committee was holding a hearing to examine waste shipping issues, at the request of Reps. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

Gibbons, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Gov. Kenny Guinn -- back in Washington for the second time this month after vetoing Bush's Yucca endorsement on April 8 -- were seated next to congressional candidate Democrat Dario Herrera and Republican Jon Porter. The political foes are vying for Nevada's new third seat in the House, and for bragging rights in the Yucca fight. They have traded barbs over who fights harder. But for the House panel, the two donned a veil of unity.

Berkley was there, too, as a member of the Transportation Committee, peppering witnesses with questions.

The Nevada politicians recognized the awkward scheduling of the hearing. They knew the energy panel had voted to approve Yucca Mountain just as they were testifying that shipping waste was dangerous.

They know the transportation hearing will have little to no effect on the House vote. But Nevada officials said they had helped spark the national debate about waste shipping.

"They were listening," Guinn said of the transportation panel members, as he hurried off after his testimony to tape television interviews. "I'm very pleased with their reaction."

Indeed, several lawmakers on the panel said they were deeply concerned about waste being shipped through their states.

Energy Department officials have assured lawmakers that critical questions about safety, routes, shipment security, barge shipments and costs will be answered in the years to come -- before waste is shipped to Nevada by 2010 at the earliest.

Two panels of experts followed the Nevadans. Department of Transportation research administrator Ellen Engleman said the Transportation Department worked closely with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to regulate the 15 high-level nuclear waste shipments made each year.

That number would jump to 175 a year if Yucca Mountain opens, the Energy Department's Lake Barrett told the lawmakers.

Barrett has emerged as another major character in the Yucca saga. Until this year he was the Energy Department's acting Yucca chief, who gladly handed the reins to longtime energy scientist Margaret Cho. Barrett, now a Yucca deputy director, has said he looks forward to retirement after managing the controversial project.

Berkley pestered Barrett. She asked him if he could guarantee her that the Yucca site was safe. His answer: Any project has risks, and the risks are low for this one.

Barrett also testified that the Energy Department has spent about $30 million preparing for the massive waste shipping campaign to Yucca Mountain, and that the department has been limited by congressional budget constraints.

"We're prepared to accelerate our transportation planning," Barrett said.

Later, reporters flocked around Barrett, who again asserted that questions about waste shipping would be answered in the next eight years, before shipments start. "We know this is a significant matter."

Barrett said recent train derailments did not demonstrate that waste shipping was risky.

"These (waste) containers are robust, so strong that basically a typical derailment is not a major safety concern," Barrett said.

Other experts took their turn at the witness table. Federal Railroad Administration chief Allan Rutter said, "I am confident the movement of radioactive material will be safe." Association of American Railroads chief Edward Hamberger delivered the same message: Radiation has never leaked as a result of a nuclear waste shipping accident.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission executive director Carl Paperiello stressed that the commission, which regulates waste shipping containers, also believes waste can be shipped safely.

The Nevada lawmakers arranged for their own state-paid waste shipping expert, Robert Halstead, to appear on the third panel. Halstead flatly rejected Barrett's assertion that only 175 -- mostly train -- shipments of waste would be made to Yucca each year.

Halstead figures that most shipments will be made by truck, meaning more shipments -- 2,855 per year. He laid out numerous concerns in lengthy written testimony: Barges would likely be used to haul waste in some cases. Full-scale tests on waste shipping containers have not been conducted. The safety of a massive waste shipping campaign using heavy-haul trucks was unproven, yet Energy officials insist it would be safe.

Nevada officials hope some of these arguments are ringing in the heads of their colleagues, even if it doesn't do them much good when the full House assembles next month to vote on Yucca Mountain.

The hearing caught the attention of a few national reporters, and maybe some of the public, they said.

They added that even if the House and Senate approve Yucca Mountain as expected, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will have to approve the plan before one shipment is launched to Yucca Mountain. And the final arbiter may be a federal court judge, they say.

"Every time we highlight the issue of transportation it helps the state of Nevada," Berkley said. "No member of the committee could have walked away from that hearing and felt a sense of security about waste being hauled through their state."

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