Nuke industry rips new plan to store waste as 'cowardice'

Representatives of the nuclear industry are calling a proposal to keep highly radioactive wastes at utility plants "political cowardice" and insist that the Department of Energy move the wastes into centralized temporary storage.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said Thursday that the DOE would take responsibility for nuclear wastes at scores of sites across the country instead of shipping 44,000 tons of the radioactive fuel rods to Nevada.

Richardson told a Senate hearing that the administration opposes sending the waste to Nevada for temporary storage and instead wants to leave the used nuclear fuel scattered at commercial reactors around the country until a permanent burial ground -- most probably at Yucca Mountain -- is completed after 2010.

That would leave nearly 40,000 tons of used reactor fuel sitting at 72 power plants in 33 states.

"It doesn't make sense to transport spent fuel around the country" until a permanent waste dump is found, Richardson told members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Several nuclear utilities have sued the federal government over its failure to take control of the radioactive fuel rods by 1998, and a federal court last year allowed the utilities to request compensation, said Steve Unglesbee, a Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman.

Utilities have paid $15 billion into a federal fund to finance nuclear waste disposal.

"I think we are dealing with outright political cowardice," said Steve Kerekes, also of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the industry.

Although the House has voted overwhelmingly to store the waste at the Nevada Test Site until studies are completed at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, President Clinton has kept a veto threat intact.

At present, the Senate does not have the votes to override the veto.

Gov. Kenny Guinn has sent a letter to Richardson restating Nevada's stance for the disqualification of Yucca Mountain as a repository for high-level nuclear waste.

Nevada's concerns include possible contamination of ground water and instability at the site after several earthquakes near Yucca Mountain.

Meanwhile, DOE scientists spent almost two hours Thursday night trying to explain why burying 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain is not a game of chance to a skeptical crowd of about 70 at the Clark County Government Center.

The DOE is preparing an environmental-impact statement due for release later this year that will form a scientific basis of a request for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to open a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain in 2010.

The crowd was unconvinced that nuclear waste buried at Yucca Mountain would stay put for thousands of years.

Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney called the DOE's words "sweet talk" and said land including Yucca Mountain was never ceded to the federal government under the 1863 Ruby Valley Treaty. The treaty claims most of Nevada for the Shoshone nation.

Citizen Alert Executive Director Rick Nielsen said the DOE's assurances have not convinced him a repository will remain intact for thousands of years. Nielsen said recent earthquakes within 25 miles of the site and evidence that water moves faster than expected through the mountain were reasons enough to stop the project.

"I am more certain than ever we should not put nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain," he said.

DOE Yucca Mountain Project Manager Russ Dyer said that scientists cannot control the natural system but that engineers can design containers and other barriers that will contain the waste.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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