House approves Yucca plan

Benjamin Grove and Erin Neff

Wednesday, May 8, 2002 | 2:29 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The House today overwhelmingly approved a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, marking a significant milestone in the long history of the project.

The 306-117 vote sets up action by the Senate -- which will hold three hearings on the matter this month and is expected to vote on the repository by the end of July.

The one-sentence resolution, approved after about two hours of debate, overrides Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of President Bush's recommendation that Yucca Mountain serve as the nation's nuclear waste repository.

Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., brought the issue to the floor this morning only to be met with a parliamentary tactic from Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev. to block the vote.

Gibbons argued that federal law prevents Congress from passing laws that would create unfunded mandates for states and local governments. Gibbons and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., argued the Yucca resolution would force states and local governments to pick up a tab in the billions of dollars to prepare for waste shipments through their areas.

"Yucca Mountain is a financial boondoggle that flies in the face of fiscal responsibility," Berkley said.

Gibbons' point of order was voted down 308-105, and the debate began.

Opening moments of debate centered on familiar themes.

Tauzin argued that Yucca Mountain is a "safe and secure" site for waste storage. He assured the House that unresolved scientific questions about the site would be resolved in the next few years. Tauzin, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, stressed that both Democrats and Republicans on his panel approved the resolution, 41-6.

"This is the right thing for America and we stand as Americans united to get this important resolution passed," Tauzin said.

Berkley stressed the accident and terrorist risks associated with shipping waste across America from power plants to Nevada. Berkley said 83 percent of Nevadans oppose the Yucca project. The state has no nuclear plants.

"Nevada is being asked to carry a burden we had no part in creating," Berkley said.

Nevada lawmakers found several allies to argue their case, including Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who argued that transporting was rife with dangers.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, said the reason there is support for Yucca Mountain is , "Nevada is not Texas. It is not South Carolina." He noted that handling the waste is viewed as Nevada's problem, but "getting it there is ours."

Berkley and Gibbons lobbied colleagues right up until debate began.

Berkley, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera, a Democrat who is running for Congress, each spent several minutes addressing the weekly meeting of the House Democrats today. They urged lawmakers to reject the Yucca project.

It was unusual for a senator and local government official to speak to the caucus, but House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri has been a Berkley ally in her fight against the dump.

"We're going to do everything we can to derail this ill-thought-out, ill-advised proposal," Gephardt told reporters after the caucus meeting.

Still, Nevada lawmakers expect at least 300 lawmakers in the 435-member House to support the Yucca proposal.

Berkley and Gephardt invited Herrera, who is also a Democratic candidate for Nevada's new third House seat, to help them lobby House Democrats.

Gibbons, who has had a more difficult time rallying GOP colleagues to vote against Yucca, made his 100th anti-Yucca speech on the House floor during the debate.

The third-term congressman made his 99th this morning during a one-minute address.

Meanwhile today in Washington, the independent board created by Congress to review the Department of Energy's work on the Yucca project concluded a two-day meeting. The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board has said the scientific evidence supporting the site has been "weak to moderate" so far.

On Tuesday board chairman Jared Cohon also said he believes the DOE has not clearly explained all the project "uncertainties" to Congress.

Congress in 1987 designated the Yucca site as the only one in the nation to be studied to determine whether it was a geologically suitable site to bury 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste. The waste would be shipped from 131 temporary storage locations, mostly at nuclear power plants and U.S. defense sites. It would travel through as many as 45 states by truck and train over several decades.

The Energy Department deemed the desert ridge a suitable site after 15 years of analysis. President Bush quickly endorsed the site recommendation.

Guinn, in another historic action, vetoed Bush's approval April 8. The unique Nuclear Waste Policy Act, originally drafted by Congress in 1982, gave Guinn that unprecedented right. But the House and Senate can override Guinn's veto by approving the resolution with a simple majority.

Debate over Yucca Mountain has centered on a number of topics from national security to waste transportation and the future of nuclear power in America.

Today's House action followed years of lobbying that intensified in recent months on both sides of the issue.

Pro-Yucca forces, led by the nuclear industry and its influential trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, have argued that the nation needs a central, remote, secure location for 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive nuclear waste. No new nuclear power plants have been approved since the 1970s. Industry officials argue that a national nuclear waste repository is needed before any new plants could be constructed.

Nuclear industry officials hasten to add that Congress agreed by law to begin hauling waste away from nuclear plants by 1998, and now nuclear power plant operators are suing the Department of Energy for breaking the contract.

Nuclear waste -- mostly solid, spent uranium fuel rods that once powered nuclear reactors -- is currently stored in waste pools and in dry on-site containers. Storing the radioactive material in underground tunnels at Yucca would be safer from terrorists, nuclear industry officials argue.

Nevada officials sharply disagree. They advocate leaving the waste where it is for now, until future years and new technologies reveal better solutions to burial. They say it would be safer to increase security at on-site storage areas and not risk accidents and terrorist attacks by launching thousands of shipments to Nevada.

"With around the clock nuclear waste shipments rolling for decades, the chance of a terrorist attack is all too plausible, in our post-Sept. 11 world. The risk is unacceptable.," Berkley and three other House lawmakers, including Gephardt wrote in a letter to colleagues Tuesday.