Wednesday, July 13, 2005 | 11:02 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- A key House lawmaker said he plans to introduce a bill that could mandate a 10,000-year radiation standard for Yucca Mountain.
The bill, to be unveiled by House Energy Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, could include a number of other changes that would amount to an overhaul of the nation's nuclear waste policy, which since 1987 has focused on developing an underground repository at Yucca Mountain for the nation's most radioactive waste.
Barton intends to pursue a comprehensive nuclear waste bill in the fall, he told the Sun on Tuesday. In addition to the radiation standard provision, Barton said he may include several other provisions designed to speed the completion of Yucca Mountain -- proposals that have drawn strong opposition from Nevada lawmakers.
Barton, a leading advocate of nuclear power and Yucca Mountain in Congress, said his bill also could:
Devise a plan for storing nuclear waste at temporary storage sites while Yucca Mountain is being developed.
Take Yucca Mountain "off budget," which would allow the Energy Department to more freely access a national nuclear waste fund outside the annual spending constraints of the congressional budget process.
The fund has been fed for years by a special tax paid by users of nuclear power-generated electricity, and nuclear utility companies say the money should flow more freely toward its purpose -- constructing a permanent waste repository at Yucca.
All three of the proposals have been floated previously by pro-Yucca lawmakers, and met with limited success. The proposal to set the radiation standard would essentially overturn a court ruling that handed the project a serious setback last year.
But there is always a chance the GOP-controlled Congress could embrace the proposals given another chance, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said.
"It's payback time for the millions of dollars that were spent by the nuclear industry in predominantly Republican districts," Berkley said.
But Nevada's GOP House members said the three proposals would continue to be a tough sell in the House, despite a number of lawmakers who support Yucca Mountain.
The House Budget Committee has no appetite for taking Yucca off budget, Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., said.
"It takes away our congressional oversight of taxpayer-dollar expenditures, which no one believes is a good idea," Gibbons said.
Nuclear industry leaders have said the proposal does not strip away oversight, just artificial annual budget caps.
But Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said changing Yucca funding rules would be a "major step in the wrong direction," at a time when "red flags" have been raised about Yucca's viability as a repository site.
Porter is leading a House investigation of Yucca program e-mails that suggest some quality assurance documents were falsified. The program for years has been plagued by budget shortfalls, delays and controversy about scientific research at the site.
The Barton legislation would not stand much of a chance in the Senate, either, aides to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said.
"It sounds like a campaign letter to the nuclear industry," Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.
Any legislation designed to speed Yucca is "dead on arrival as far as we're concerned," Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said.
The proposal to spend $10 million to launch a program to construct a temporary government waste site, or sites, was included in a House bill this year, but not embraced by the Senate. Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a champion of the nuclear industry, has said the interim site proposal is a worthy plan, but not as it was proposed in limited scope and funding this year.
Nevada lawmakers oppose developing interim sites, in part due to what they consider transportation risks, although the nuclear industry says waste transportation is safe.
"We have done nothing to prepare for the transportation of deadly, highly toxic materials," Berkley said.
The proposal that Congress set a radiation standard for Yucca Mountain has quietly been under consideration in Congress since July 2004 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out the 10,000-year standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The court said that standard, which sets a limit on the amount of radiation that could escape the repository for 10,000 years, was not in line with stricter standards recommended by the National Academy of Sciences.
The court offered two options: Congress could set a new standard, or the EPA could issue a new one more in line with the academy. After intensive review, the EPA is currently preparing to release a new standard in response to the court ruling.
But Barton said congressional action is still on the table.
"I want to look at all the research and the data, but it's something I might consider," Barton said.
Nevada lawmakers said that legislating a new standard in Congress would circumvent the EPA's attempt to set a safe science-based standard. They said it would also re-write the federal law that dictates that the EPA, in concert with National Academy experts, should set a safe standard.
"It's sort of what we have been saying all along -- that they are just changing the rules to make it (Yucca) work," Hafen said.
Meanwhile nuclear industry lobbyists are pushing yet a fourth proposal for Barton to consider: establish a board to manage Yucca Mountain, somewhat independent of the Energy Department, which has run the program since its inception.
A plan to establish a government-chartered corporation that would have some independence to oversee the $58 billion Yucca program has been advocated by some Yucca backers for years.
Martez Norris, executive director of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, which strongly advocates Yucca, said the group has "long-supported" having a quasi-government company manage the repository.
"Eventually it has to come out of the hands of DOE (Energy Department)," said Norris, who is also a member of the Yucca Mountain Task Force, a new pro-Yucca industry and utility lobby group. "It is not in the construction business or the operations business, it is in the research business."
Nevada lawmakers dismissed the Yucca-management idea. Gibbons called it a "gimmick to move Yucca Mountain along."
Nuclear industry lobbyists have been eager to implement Yucca legislation this year, given the support they enjoy from President Bush and Republican congressional leaders.
Barton met recently to discuss options for Yucca Mountain legislation with David Wright and Charles Pray, co-chairmen of the Yucca Mountain Task Force, and David Blee, executive director of the U.S. Transport Council, a pro-Yucca group that touts the shipping industry's safe record of nuclear waste transportation.
Wright said the task force's top priority is for Congress to take Yucca off-budget.
"He did not tell us he had a four-point plan," Wright said. "He told us first and foremost he wanted to get through the energy bill conference. He felt though that Yucca Mountain resolutions needed to come too."
Although conversations with Barton did not focus on legislative options to keep the 10,000-year standard in place, task force members believe that re-securing the standard would allow the license application process to continue, Norris said.
Norris also said Barton understands that it is important for the project to have more access to funding, free from annual congressional budget caps.
"You don't run any business like that, where you don't know what funding you will get from year to year," she said.
As for interim storage, Wright said the task force wants Yucca to remain an option to hold waste before it could officially move into the repository. Right now, federal law prohibits Yucca from holding waste temporarily so Congress would have to change that law to allow waste to be moved there.
The task force supports that concept but it did not come up during the meeting with Barton, Wright said.
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