Monday, March 14, 2005 | 11:04 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., intends to unveil legislation aimed at making Yucca Mountain obsolete by allowing the Energy Department to take ownership of waste as it sits now at nuclear power plants.
The bill, similar to a bill that Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., has been pushing since 2001, would represent a significant shift in nuclear waste policy and would likely face strong opposition in Congress.
The bill would allow the Energy Department to take ownership and responsibility for cost and security of on-site waste storage, currently a burden of the nuclear utilities nationwide that produce the waste, Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.
Reid's bill would allow the department to use the money in a national nuclear waste fund to manage the radioactive material at the plants. Currently, by law, that money must be used for the development of a national permanent geologic repository -- Yucca.
Congress in 1982 pledged that the Energy Department would begin shipping waste to Yucca by Jan. 31, 1998, for permanent storage. But the planned underground repository has been delayed by budget and legal setbacks.
Nuclear utilities have continued to store some of the nation's most radioactive "high-level" waste at their plants -- and in recent years filed 66 lawsuits against the government, with potential damages in the billions of dollars.
Congress will break for a spring recess later this week, and Reid intends to introduce the legislation shortly after Congress returns April 4. Reid hinted at his intention in written comments submitted for a hearing of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee last week.
"I believe it is time to look at other nuclear waste alternatives," Reid said in the written statement. "One option may be for the federal government to take responsibility for the nuclear waste at the reactor sites. This is the right thing to do and I look forward to discussing this option with my colleagues."
Two potential allies could be Sens. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Reid aides said. Bennett and Hatch strongly support Yucca. But they are also trying to stop a proposed temporary nuclear waste site on Goshute Indian reservation land in their state, considered a stopover site for waste until Yucca is completed. Reid is hoping to pique their interest because his bill could eliminate the need for the Utah site.
Bennett and Hatch have received pledges from White House officials that the administration would continue to support Yucca and not the temporary Utah site, although the White House has taken no concrete steps to block the Utah site.
Reid likely would need the support of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Yucca funding. Domenici, who was unavailable for comment, is a leading Yucca proponent but has also endorsed consideration of both short- and long-term waste storage alternatives as the delayed Yucca program plods ahead.
Reid likely would face a significant legislative battle. The Nevada delegation has always operated in a Congress where Yucca enjoyed majority support, especially from lawmakers who represent districts with nuclear plants.
Reid's bill would represent a significant change in the nation's long-standing nuclear waste strategy. Congress approved geologic storage in 1982 and designated Yucca as the sole focus of study in 1987. President Bush and Congress officially approved Yucca in 2002 after years of Energy Department research and fierce lobbying by Nevada lawmakers against the controversial repository.
"I really don't think Congress has the stomach to go through that again," said Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top lobby group.
Nuclear industry officials will strongly oppose the legislation because they have long argued that a permanent geologic repository was the best long-term waste solution. Plants, which store waste in cooling pools and outdoor, above-ground "dry casks," were never designed for permanent storage, they say.
"It's a non-starter," NEI waste management director Steve Kraft said of Reid's bill. "Every year this point gets missed: It's not the ownership of the material, it's where the material is. The material has to leave our sites."
Nevada officials and other Yucca critics have long said it was safer and more cost-effective to continue storing waste at plants, at least until a better Yucca alternative can be developed.
Reid aides said a notable benefit of the Reid bill is that it would eliminate the need for shipping waste cross-country by truck and train.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., plans to co-sponsor the bill, an Ensign aide said.
But Berkley hasn't won much House support in four years that she has advocated a bill similar to Reid's legislation. Her bill has only garnered a handful of co-sponsors and has never even been granted a hearing by House Republican leaders, who generally support Yucca. The House in 2002 approved Yucca on a 306-117 vote.
Nils Diaz, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would license and regulate Yucca, today said there is no significant safety hazard to temporary on-site waste storage. But he said that at some point waste stored on-site should be moved to a central site and that the commission supports geologic storage.
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