Congress OKs nuclear waste in Nevada

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, July 9, 2002 | 8:12 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Putting to rest decades of political wrangling, the U.S. Senate voted 60-39 Tuesday to put a high-level nuclear waste dump at 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The vote came after more than four hours of debate on the Senate floor. Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., who had spent months lobbying their colleagues, made impassioned pleas that failed to sway enough senators to stop the dump.

Despite arguments that the transportation of nuclear waste is unsafe or untested, the Senate approved the dump with pro-Yucca senators saying that the vote only gives the Energy Department a chance to move ahead to the projects next step.

The vote, the final congressional approval of the project, gives the Energy Department the go-ahead to apply for a license with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Energy Department is expected to apply for a license by 2004. If approved, the first shipments could arrive by 2007, with the first waste being buried by 2010.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the Senate voted to let the project go ahead "to the next step, recognizing that the independent experts at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission deserve the the right to review the 24 years of scientific study of Yucca Mountain and to consider the site for a license."

Nevada, which spent millions of dollars on the anti-Yucca lobbying effort, will continue to pursue a half dozen lawsuits designed to stop the dump, officials said.

The major decision politically, however, was decided when the Senate followed the House of Representatives in overriding Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the project. Both Abraham and President Bush supported the Yucca Mountain proposal.

On the Senate floor, Ensign engaged pro-Yucca Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, in a spirited debate. Murkowski tried to downplay concerns about Yucca Mountain. He said federal agencies would make sure waste shipments were safe.

"All we're doing is allowing the secretary (of Energy) to apply for the license" for Yucca Mountain, Murkowski said. "The act does not address the transportation or storage."

But Ensign said that was a paramount concern as the Senate would never have another chance to debate Yucca Mountain.

"Today is the only time the Senate would have to vote," Ensign said, noting that the Energy Department had only provided estimates on the number of shipments and couldn't say if "I have 20 shipments coming through my state or if I have 1,000 shipments a year coming through my state."

Nevada's arguments -- that the science is not finished and the transportation of nuclear waste has never been tested -- went without swaying many in the Senate.

Murkowski, long a champion of putting a dump in Nevada, introduced the motion to proceed with action on Yucca Mountain. Ensign launched a debate on Senate procedure, arguing that only the Senate's Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, D-S.D., should be allowed to bring Yucca to the floor, according to Senate tradition.

He said Murkowski's action set a dangerous precedent.

"This precedent is in the eye of the beholder and that's what makes it so dangerous," Ensign said. "Every senator needs to reflect on this vote very, very carefully. This vote could literally change the way that the Senate operates."

Murkowski said he was well within Senate rules under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

"Despite what has been said we are proceeding under Senate rules," Murkowski said. "I hope we can put that matter to rest that we are somehow violating or circumventing Senate rules here."

Early debate today also focused on transporting nuclear waste. Ensign challenged the Energy Department statistic cited by Murkowski that only 175 shipments of nuclear waste would travel to Yucca each year. Murkowski acknowledged it was an estimate because transportation plans have not been finalized.

Murkowski sought to shift focus away from waste transportation to the narrow resolution before the Senate: whether to approve Yucca.

Reid and Ensign also enlisted the help of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who during debate asked Murkowski pointed questions about waste shipping, but it was not immediately clear how Specter intended to vote today.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, another Yucca advocate, derided Ensign's questions about waste shipping as mere fear mongering.

"It is an alarmist political tactic to try to kill this very effort," Craig said.

The senators agreed to 4 1/2 hours of debate on the procedures of the debate with a vote coming at the end of that time. The procedural vote was expected to be the final vote in which each senator's vote would be recorded, with a simple voice vote on the Yucca Mountain resolution coming directly after the procedural vote.

"We call this a procedural vote, but it is in fact a test of the majority," Reid said.

Reid and Ensign faced long odds on swaying the Senate against voting for the 20-year-old nuclear waste proposal.

Dealing a blow to Reid, fence-sitter Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he will vote for Yucca, the federal plan to construct a national nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site.

Durbin, a long-time Reid ally, has opposed Yucca-related legislation in past years. But Illinois is home to more nuclear power reactors than any other state, and lawmakers there have been under great pressure from the industry to support Yucca.

Durbin said his support for Yucca is rooted partly in his belief that strict radiation standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency will protect humans and the environment.

"All of these standards greatly exceed the standards debated by Congress in the two previous bills I opposed," Durbin wrote in an opinion article in today's editions of the Chicago Tribune.

Two other "undecided" senators -- Utah Republicans Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett -- on Monday publicly announced that they would vote for Yucca.

The two got assurances from the Energy secretary and White House officials Monday that a vote for Yucca was a vote against the Skull Valley reservation proposal. That plan would establish a temporary waste site on Goshute Indian property in the west Utah desert.

Abraham emerged with the Utah senators after a meeting at the White House saying that the private sector will be forced to develop to "makeshift, ad hoc" above-ground waste sites if Yucca is defeated.

"My message is, in short, that if Yucca Mountain moves ahead, sites such as the Utah site will not move ahead," Abraham said.

The Utah senators agreed that Yucca was the best solution to the nation's waste problem, despite grave concerns about Yucca-bound waste traveling through Utah.

"I would much rather have it pass through than stop and stay," Bennett said.

The Utah senators said Yucca was the lesser of two evils compared to the Goshute repository because waste would be underground at a site that has been scrutinized by 20 years of study.

"I don't feel good about this at all," a grim-looking Hatch said. "These (Nevadans) are our neighbors to the West. But we all have to represent our constituents the best we can."

Ensign spokeswoman Traci Scott would not comment on the Utah senators' decision. Ensign had leaned on the Republicans heavily, and the two said his concerns about waste shipping weighed heavily on their minds.

Several other senators today still were not announcing their stance on Yucca, including Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., who has voted against Yucca in a previous vote. A Chafee spokeswoman said he had plans to meet with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman later today.

Goodman arrived in Washington on Monday to lobby key senators, and planned to hammer the message that transporting waste across the country to Nevada invited accidents and terrorist threats. Goodman met with Specter, under whom Goodman once served as a law clerk, for breakfast this morning. Specter didn't tell Goodman how he intended to vote.

Goodman said Bush and the Energy Department "are willing to play a game of Russian roulette with America's cities."

"Our Washington officials are arrogant to think they know all the answers on how to prevent a nuclear accident or terrorist attack when shipping radioactive cargo through our country," Goodman said. "How can they assume this when the DOE has not answered the most basic questions on the subject of the safety of nuclear transportation or public security in its 5,000-page environmental impact statement?"

In other action Monday, Daschle made a final-hour plea to Bush to call off Senate Republicans.

Daschle argued that the Senate should focus this week not on Yucca but on a bill aimed at corporate reform.

Bush today was to deliver a speech outlining solutions to a wave of accounting scandals, and said he wants to work with Congress to craft corporate accountability legislation.

"I am writing to ask you to prevail upon members of your party in the Senate to refrain from this ill-considered and ill-timed effort to sidetrack the accounting reform bill," Daschle wrote to Bush.

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