Bill renews battle over nuke storage at Test Site

Two congressmen have submitted a bill to place high-level nuclear waste at the Nevada Test Site while studies continue on a proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain.

Reps. Fred Upton, R-Mich. and Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., introduced the legislation late Wednesday.

A similar measure passed overwhelmingly in the House in 1997. The congressmen said the Department of Energy has failed to deliver on a promise to remove 35,000 tons of radioactive wastes stacking up at nuclear plants across the nation.

Nuclear utilities and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year mounted a major push for temporary storage of nuclear waste at the Nevada Test Site.

The nuclear industry's jitters follow a year in which the threat of a veto on a temporary nuclear-storage site in Nevada by President Clinton stymied Congress for the second time in the '90s.

Nevada, in its fight to stop the move for temporary storage of nuclear waste in the state, gained political clout when Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., became the new Senate minority whip and vowed to block nuclear waste storage at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Reid considers the threat of storing such waste at the Test Site worse than the fight over permanent storage of the nation's 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from commercial reactors and defense activities at Yucca Mountain.

It is against current law to store high-level nuclear waste in Nevada as long as Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, remains under study as a permanent dump.

Yucca Mountain will not open until 2010, if ever, after renewed scientific studies are completed. Recent geological research showed that the mountain's crust has moved visibly in seven years, raising new questions about the site's suitability for nuclear storage.

In addition, new studies have focused on the threat of deep, hot water invading buried nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. If such geothermal activity has occurred periodically, the rising water could corrode waste-filled canisters, releasing radioactivity into ground water.

But the nuclear industry is again beating the drum for temporary storage after a U.S. Court of Federal Claims decision in October. The court found the U.S. Department of Energy liable for the cost of storing radioactive waste at three closed nuclear power plants in New England.

The court did not specify how much the DOE should pay. The plants' owners estimate the cost at $290 million. The nuclear power industry is arguing that the October decision set a precedent that will eventually apply to all power plants. If that happened, the DOE could be liable for billions of dollars in storage costs at reactor sites.

Proponents of nuclear energy warn that such storage expenses could bankrupt the federal budget and delay efforts to deregulate the electric industry.

If the DOE doesn't begin moving waste to the Nevada Test Site, the utilities said nuclear power plants could run out of onsite storage space, forcing reactors to shut down.

Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the DOE had promised to remove radioactive waste from commercial reactors by Jan. 31, 1998. That deadline came and went. The utilities said they had 35,000 tons of nuclear waste piling up, but the DOE had nowhere to put it.

The Clinton administration has opposed building a temporary storage site in Nevada until Yucca Mountain is deemed scientifically fit to keeping radioactive waste forever.

Although the DOE released to Congress a report card on Yucca giving it a passing grade, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson vowed that science -- not politics -- will drive the remaining years of studies at Yucca Mountain.

In December, 219 international and national environmental groups -- including the Sierra Club and Greenpeace -- asked Richardson to disqualify Yucca Mountain as the site. They cited earthquake possibilities, volcanic activity and rising deep water as major threats. Under current law, any one of those three environmental disruptions, if proved scientifically, would be enough to stop progress at Yucca.

Former Gov. Bob Miller and new Gov. Kenny Guinn both signed a bipartisan letter to Richardson, urging him to disqualify the site.

Nuclear-industry leaders and congressional staff say they hope to work with Richardson on draft storage legislation acceptable to the Clinton administration.

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