Friday, Aug. 1, 2003 | 9:46 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Incentives for renewable energy production approved in the Senate energy bill Thursday night could bode well for Nevada, but a push for more nuclear power development could eventually translate into more waste coming into the state.
The energy bill was identical to one approved last year that was killed in a conference committee. The bill, passed by the House in April, now heads again to conference committee in September.
Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev, voted in favor of the bill passed Thursday night.
Many of the bill's programs and policies still hang in the balance, since Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of Senate Energy and Natural Resources, has vowed to include controversial provisions into the conference report.
For renewable energy, the bill included Reid's language that provides tax credits for renewable resources such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal power. Reid said the language would create jobs in the states while providing a "steady, reliable energy supply."
"We have limitless renewable resources in Nevada, and these tax incentives will make Nevada the proving ground of renewable energy," Reid said.
Approving last year's bill also resurrected a provision that could mandate that electricity suppliers generate 10 percent of power from renewable resources by 2020.
Meanwhile, the bill excluded federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power reactors, but reauthorizes the Price-Anderson Act, a federal insurance programs for nuclear reactors, until 2012 and funds some nuclear research and development programs.
A new nuclear reactor has not been built for decades and the legislation did not spell out what would happen to spent fuel produced by the new facilities, should they be built.
Plans for a federal nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, would hold 77,000 metric tons of spent fuel. About 46,000 tons of waste slated to go to the mountain sit now sits in storage at commercial nuclear power plants and Energy Department facilities. If all goes according to the department's plan, the site will begin accepting waste in 2010, but the country's 103 reactors will still be producing waste at about 2,000 tons each year.
The department anticipates submitting a license to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2004. The commission has three years, and up to an additional 12 months with congressional approval, to determine if it can authorize construction.
Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said he was pleased with the bill Thursday night since some of the major nuclear components, the loan guarantee and permanent reauthorization of the insurance program, were not included.
Although since Domenici said he will reinsert those provisions, Finn said he will be watching the bill and take steps at the right time to make sure they are not included.
Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen noted that the bill does not put any more or less pressure on opening the mountain, nor does it even mention the site.
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