Monday, March 10, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Despite a continuing veto threat from President Clinton, Republican senators plan to schedule a vote before a planned March 21 recess on a bill to store nuclear waste in Nevada.
Sens. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, have been trying to move a bill placing 30,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste temporarily at the Nevada Test Site, while study continues at nearby Yucca Mountain for a permanent dump.
That bill could come to a committee vote as soon as Wednesday. Congressional staffers and nuclear industry lobbyists say they have a strategy for slipping it through without too many delays.
The Energy and Natural Resources Committee, headed by Murkowski, plans to pass the temporary nuclear waste storage measure, but not send it to the full Senate.
Then the House will introduce its own measure, and if it passes, send its bill to the Senate. There, the House version will substitute for the original SB104, avoiding a lengthy filibuster.
Last year, Nevada's two senators, Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both Democrats, filibustered the temporary storage bill. Combined with a presidential veto threat, congressional efforts failed to pass it. President Clinton has said that dividing resources for temporary storage hurts the ongoing $3 billion study at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Energy last year to take responsibility for the nuclear wastes piling up at commercial power plants across the country. The DOE has until Jan. 31, 1998, to take title to the waste. The ruling did not target Nevada for storage.
However, Murkowski and Craig created a showdown with Clinton over his Energy secretary nominee, Federico Pena, bottling up his approval until the administration agrees on a course for handling temporary nuclear waste storage.
Pena's bid to replace former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary has been stalled by Republicans complaining that the White House is avoiding the issue of cleaning up nuclear waste.
When the Senate energy panel gave 19 votes to Pena's confirmation Thursday, Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., promised to schedule a temporary nuclear waste storage vote before the spring recess, predicting a successful vote of more than 64. Last year, the Senate's 63-37 tally for the bill fell four short of a veto-proof two-thirds majority.
Clinton is standing by his veto threat. Bryan and Reid said they have the votes to sustain a veto.
This solidarity is important for Nevada, said Dennis Bechtel, Clark County Nuclear Waste Division coordinator.
Clinton understands that even if the DOE considers Yucca Mountain as a viable site next year, when preliminary studies are due for completion, it is still not a confirmed site for the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump, Bechtel said.
Many more years of scientific study and testing of the complex volcanic rock at Yucca Mountain stretch ahead before the DOE could hope to win a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Bechtel said.
The president could continue to veto temporary storage in Nevada until the end of his term, Bechtel said, "if he understands the science. And I think he does."
If all else fails, Nevada has threatened to sue the federal government for sending some of the deadliest materials known to Nevada, said Bob Loux, director of the state Nuclear Waste Project Office.
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