Thursday, May 19, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- A House committee approved a bill Wednesday that presses the Department of Energy to pursue stopgap storage sites for nuclear waste as delays mount at Yucca Mountain.

The panel directed the department to consider placing spent nuclear fuel on federal reservations in Washington state, Idaho or South Carolina or other federally owned sites, closed military bases or fuel storage facilities not operated by the government.

The proposal, led by Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, represents a turn in the decades-long effort to dispose of high-level radioactive spent fuel gathering at nuclear power plants.

Hobson, who leads a House energy subcommittee, said his purpose was not to replace plans for a Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada but to provide a cushion for the project.

It has been set back in recent years by legal rulings, underfunding by Congress and allegations that quality-assurance documents might have been falsified.

"Yucca Mountain is going to happen, but in the interim, I have to have some solution," Hobson said.

"It helps bridge the time until (Yucca Mountain) is open, and it helps underwriters," Hobson said.

Underwriters will decide whether to loan billions of dollars to utilities to build new power plants amid uncertainty about how their spent fuel will be managed.

In the late 1990s, the Energy Department supported storing nuclear waste at a temporary site near Yucca Mountain. Hobson's proposal marks the debut of an idea to gather nuclear waste on government land elsewhere, officials said.

The bill approved Wednesday must navigate the House and the Senate. The measure has gotten a lukewarm reception from the Energy Department and some in the nuclear industry who fear it might distract attention from completing the Nevada repository.

"We're trying to say let's look at this and let's get it started," Hobson said.

Nevada lawmakers, who oppose Yucca Mountain, were split on the proposal.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said he saw it as a sign that lawmakers are recognizing flaws at the Yucca site, which critics call unsafe and unsuitable for nuclear waste storage.

"The fact that they are looking at alternatives is a positive," Porter said.

But Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said setting up interim storage in other states does little to stop a Nevada repository.

"I don't think it takes the pressure off Yucca Mountain," she said. "It's just a temporary solution."

Hobson inserted his provision into a report with the Energy Department's annual spending bill.

As approved Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee, the bill allocates $661 million to continue work at Yucca Mountain, $10 million more than the Energy Department requested.

The committee told the agency to use the $10 million, plus another $10 million within its budget, to start exploring interim storage. The committee told DOE to send Congress a study within four months.

The proposal was coupled with a new push for the Energy Department to speed research of recycling technologies that could reduce the volumes and toxicity of spent nuclear fuel.

The committee directed DOE to recommend by October 2008 some form of waste reprocessing.

New forms of reprocessing being used in Europe can reduce risks that caused the United States to abandon commercial reprocessing in the 1970s, the committee said in its report.

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