Maybe no dump at Yucca after all

Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007 | 7:21 a.m.

WASHINGTON - For years Yucca Mountain and the future of nuclear energy in this country have been intertwined until, suddenly Tuesday, that seemed to no longer be the case.

At a packed Capitol Hill news conference celebrating plans for the nation's first new nuclear power plant in a generation, senators praised the project. Colorful charts showed what the future would bring.

Then 45 minutes into the briefing the most important issue for Nevadans emerged: Would Yucca Mountain, the nation's planned repository 90 miles outside Las Vegas, be expected to store the nuclear waste?

Not necessarily, came the answer.

The chief executive of the firm submitting the first nuclear power application in nearly 30 years for a pair of plants in south Texas said that as far as he's concerned, the waste can stay on the company's 12,200-acre site for the next century.

"There's plenty of room to store our own waste," said David Crane, president and chief executive of NRG Energy Inc.

Later he told reporters: "Whether Yucca Mountain happens or not plays no part in our calculation."

Ever since Washington chose Yucca Mountain to be the nation's nuclear waste dump over Nevada's objections five years ago, the Bush administration's hoped-for nuclear energy renaissance and Yucca Mountain have been intertwined.

Without a guaranteed place to store the waste, new plants would have difficulty coming online.

Now, if the companies are saying they don't need Yucca Mountain, who does?

Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley's spokesman, David Cherry, said, "if it's perfectly OK to leave it in Texas for the next 100 years, what is the urgency - or need, period - for Yucca Mountain?"

"The whole dialogue has shifted in our favor," Republican Rep. Jon Porter said. "This should change history as to the future storage of nuclear waste."

What came through Tuesday was the acknowledgment by NRG Energy and industry backers in Congress that on-site storage will be the de facto plan for the future.

The company's application is the first of 28 expected in the next few years for 32 new plants , according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses the facilities.

Government regulators have long said that spent fuel can be safely stored at plant sites well beyond the life of those facilities - for at least 90 years.

Perhaps the industry's strongest supporter in Washington, New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, said Tuesday that a permanent repository remains the goal, but interim options should be on the table.

"Some people believe we should proceed with the site in Nevada, and others believe it's close to becoming a research facility," Domenici said.

"I think we're ready as a nation to get around to a temporary storage facility," he said. "That's what I'm hoping for."

Domenici called the waste issue "the most important question."

But he added, "I'm not worried yet."

Even as nuclear energy has grown in popularity as a way to curtail global warming, Yucca Mountain's popularity has been waning among the industry and lawmakers as the project drags on. When Nevada Sen. Harry Reid became majority leader in January, some thought the proposed repository was doomed.

More than 50,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored at power plants across the country. Because of the delays, the government failed to carry out its legal responsibility to take the waste to Yucca Mountain, and the companies have sued the government for storage costs.

Separately, the Energy Department has been entertaining ideas to store waste at research sites nationwide that are being considered to pursue nuclear waste reprocessing - a method of recycling the waste that scientists think remains decades off.

Nevada's congressional delegation has sought legislation to have the government take ownership of waste at existing storage sites nationwide.

"This is the way the nuclear industry needs to be thinking," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said.

Although the industry's new attitude may be good for Yucca's critics, it still poses problems for the nation, some said.

The industry still has no long-term solution for one of the most dangerous materials on the planet, Cherry said.

"I'm sure the people of Texas will be thrilled to hear they will become a waste dump," he said. "They're going to create trash there's nowhere to put."