Hatch preparing bill on Yucca alternatives

Benjamin Grove

Friday, June 24, 2005 | 9:38 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is preparing legislation that would direct the government to oversee study of two alternatives to Yucca Mountain: leaving high-level nuclear waste stored where it is at power plants or temporarily storing it at government sites.

The legislation would also ban shipments of nuclear waste to a private, interim waste site on Goshute Indian reservation land in Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission could license the site for nuclear waste storage as soon as this year. Utah lawmakers strongly oppose the site, which many see as a stepping-stone for nuclear waste that eventually would be bound for the proposed permanent high-level nuclear waste dump planned for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Utah site is being developed by a coalition of nuclear utilities called Private Fuel Storage. Nuclear utilities have been frustrated with years of delays at Yucca.

Hatch is equally frustrated that plans for the Utah site are progressing. Hatch said the plan is dangerous, in part because it is in a training flight pattern for Air Force jets.

Hatch and Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, agreed to vote for Yucca in 2002 after receiving White House assurances that the nation's waste policy would be Yucca, not private sites.

"I understand why our colleagues from Nevada oppose the Yucca Mountain site," Hatch said in a Senate speech Thursday. "I am getting more and more understanding of that as I go along. But if they are concerned about waste at Yucca Mountain, they should be exponentially more concerned over the PFS site which is so flawed as to be inherently dangerous, extremely dangerous."

Hatch believes Private Fuel Storage is attempting an end-run around the federal government's high-level nuclear waste policy, which is to bury waste in Yucca Mountain.

Hatch still supports Yucca, but he wants a more comprehensive nuclear waste policy, which seems to be "broken," Hatch said.

"Sen. Hatch wants to look at the whole package and see what the options are," Hatch spokesman Adam Elggren said of Hatch's bill.

Hatch plans to pursue the legislation "vigorously" this year, Elggren said.

Nevada lawmakers generally favor leaving nuclear waste where it is temporarily stored in pools and outdoor casks at the nation's 103 active nuclear reactors. Nuclear power industry leaders strongly oppose that, saying it is not a long-term solution. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., advocates legislation that would allow the government to take title, or ownership, of waste at the plant sites.