Hatch to revive nuke waste options

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | 9:30 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Orrin Hatch is planning to breathe fresh life into a bill aimed at seeking options to Yucca Mountain.

Hatch, R-Utah, unsuccessfully tried to attach the legislation as an amendment to the energy bill approved by Congress earlier this year.

Now he plans to introduce it again, likely next week, in the wake of his colleague's surprising call for abandoning Yucca as a permanent waste repository.

In a Senate speech Tuesday, Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, said the nation should leave waste where it sits in storage at nuclear plants and shift U.S. waste policy away from the 18-year-old, $58 billion plan to develop Yucca.

Bennett called for development of waste reprocessing, or recycling, technology as an alternative to permanent burial. Reprocessing involves recovering plutonium from highly radioactive spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors.

The senator's comments came after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a Indian reservation in Utah as a temporary nuclear waste storage site.

Hatch did not join Bennett and stuck by the Bush administration, although he left the door open for a change in stance. For now he is not calling for an end to Yucca, although he told the Sun, "I never had a lot of support for it (Yucca)."

He told the Salt Lake Tribune, "Our only chance of getting rid of this (Utah proposal) is with the administration. It isn't with the Senate. It isn't with Harry (Reid)."

The White House and federal agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management, the Energy Department and Homeland Security Department still could take actions that block the proposed site in Utah, and Hatch wants to keep those options open, he said.

"This is a continuing dialogue and I'm going to continue to talk" to the White House, Hatch said at a news conference Thursday.

Hatch's bill would launch a study of whether the government should take ownership of waste and then either leave it on-site at plants or ship it to another government site.

The legislation also would direct the Energy Secretary to request a National Academy of Sciences study of reprocessing technology.

Hatch's legislation is designed to protect his own state's interests because it seeks alternatives to the proposed temporary nuclear waste storage site in Utah. A consortium of eight nuclear utilities won NRC approval earlier this month to develop that project on Goshute Indian land 50 miles from Salt Lake City.

But Hatch's legislation has potential to help Nevada in its fight against Yucca Mountain. Nevada lawmakers have long argued that waste should be left at plants until recycling technology or another better option to Yucca is developed.