Until just recently, no American president had toured a nuclear plant since Jimmy Carter-fitting for a country that's been spooked by atomic power since the partial, albeit contained, meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant in 1979. But President Bush has ended the freeze and taken tours of two nuclear plants. In May, he stood under twin cooling towers in Limerick, Pa., announcing that nuclear power is vital to energy independence and fighting global warming. "And," he noted, "nuclear power is safe."

Beleaguered nuclear supporters have waited decades to hear such full-throated support. No new nuclear plant has been licensed since 1978-in part because of public backlash, but also because of basic economics. Cheap natural gas became the standard for the power industry. But the calculus is changing as natural gas prices have skyrocketed, energy independence has become a political mantra, and pressure to cut greenhouse gas emissions-nuclear is virtually emission free-has increased. Some believe a "nuclear renaissance" is at hand. The industry got a boost when Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which gave federal risk insurance to new nuclear plants, along with generous tax breaks and loan guarantees.

Since then, at least a dozen utilities have filed plans to apply for new nuclear licenses. Still, major obstacles remain-chief among them what to do with nuclear waste. Solving the waste problem is the "linchpin" to expanding nuclear power, says John Rowe, CEO of Exelon, the largest nuclear operator in the country. The answer was supposed to be the Yucca Mountain Repository, to be built inside a mountain 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Yucca Mountain, says Rowe, is essential to the industry's future. But eight years after Yucca was scheduled to start accepting waste, even optimists say the earliest the controversial repository could open is 2017. So Washington is wrangling anew over what to do with the 54,000 metric tons of accumulated nuclear waste that has been produced by the country's 103 reactors. Most of it sits in temporary concrete and steel casks on the plant sites-waiting for a permanent home whose future is very much in doubt.

Whose backyard? It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 1982, Congress directed the Department of Energy to build a secure place to hold nuclear waste by 1998. Five years later, Congress narrowed the list of studied sites to one: Yucca Mountain. Nevadans cried foul, noting that the state lacked a single nuclear plant and that it was selected only because it had little political clout. Authorities say Yucca Mountain, on federal land that had already hosted nuclear tests, is an ideal location; indeed, a law passed by Congress in 2002 reaffirmed that Yucca is the official site of the federal nuclear repository. Authorities say it's isolated, dry, and has a low water table, decreasing the chance of rainwater carrying contaminants into the environment. "Scientists tell us this is the right place to store this fuel," says Sen. Pete Domenici, chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Right or not, the site has been bedeviled by problems. In 1986, the DOE issued a stop-work order to the U.S. Geological Survey because of "quality assurance" issues, said a federal report. In the 1990s, audits found recurring problems with accuracy of scientific data, software, and computer models simulating possible geological events. And in 2004, a federal court ruled that the EPA must increase its study of the possible effects of radiation at the site from 10,000 years out to 1 million years out. That, of course, takes time. Meanwhile, the Nevada delegation, led by now powerful Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who has denigrated Yucca as "a dying beast," has had some success fulfilling that prophecy by slowing money to the project.

Nine billion dollars and 24 years later, what's been produced at Yucca Mountain are two tunnels, a temporary research facility, and a heap of geological science, much of which aims to refute Nevadans' claims that Yucca is unfit because of fault lines in the area. "It's not a boondoggle," says Edward Sproat, who directs the program for the DOE. "But, yes, people should be upset about how long it's taken and how much money's been spent." Sproat, a former nuclear industry executive, took early retirement to head up Yucca a few months ago. "The reason I'm here is my own frustration," he says.

Sproat says Yucca will file for a nuclear license in 2008. That's a huge step, but he and others say Yucca already needs a massive overhaul before real construction begins. When the idea of a repository was conceived in the 1980s, policymakers assumed a cap of 70,000 metric tons of waste would suffice. "That's all changed," says Bill Greene, a DOE spokesman. "Now everything with Yucca Mountain is through the lens of expanding nuclear energy." Indeed, by the time Yucca is complete, under any projected timetable, enough waste will be waiting to fill it immediately. This year, the White House submitted legislation to prod the slow-moving project. It would raise the cap to as high as 120,000 metric tons, increase the DOE's access to a Nuclear Waste Fund financed by utilities-which pays for Yucca Mountain-and claim adjacent federal land for Yucca use. Domenici has introduced two bills of his own. One resembles the administration bill but with a major distinction; it would create ground-level storage on Yucca land until the repository is complete. Domenici's other bill takes a different approach; it would facilitate a fledgling, but crucial, nuclear fuel recycling program that might limit the amount of waste and-in the near term-consolidate nuclear waste at interim storage sites (likely existing nuclear plants) across the country. That would theoretically reduce government payments to utilities storing waste at plant sites-payments that resulted from litigation over Yucca delays.

Both face uncertain prospects. Some House members fear that directing resources to interim storage will undercut Yucca Mountain. Rep. Gene Green, a Texas Democrat, suggested that it's a "creative way" of killing Yucca, noting that Reid supports that measure; none of those interim sites would be in Nevada. Reid, who has pledged Yucca "is never going to open," supports interim storage in states that have plants but does not support interim storage in Nevada, fearing that once the waste is in Nevada, it will stay there.

Nuclear power enjoys increasingly bipartisan support-though plenty of Democrats, public interest groups, and environmentalists say the risk of radioactive fallout is still too great. Reid's stature as ranking member complicates Democratic attempts to advance an energy source they see as vital to the fight against global warming. If Democrats win the House or Senate in November, analysts say, the prospects for passing those bills-and accelerating Yucca's development-will dwindle, which they say could spell disaster for nuclear power. "You can't afford to kill Yucca Mountain," says Scott Peterson of the Nuclear Energy Institute. "It's the only long-term solution we have on our books."

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