Gov’t plans steps to advance Nevada nuclear dump

By Lisa Lambert

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration is planning
steps to advance its long-stalled proposal to build a nuclear
waste dump in the Nevada desert, officials told Congress on
Wednesday.

The government’s plan to build an underground waste dump in
the Nevada desert about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is more
than 10 years behind schedule and still plagued by scientific
foul-ups and political stonewalling.

Paul Golan, an acting director at the Department of Energy,
did not tell the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
when the department will send its proposal to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. That step was originally planned for
2004.

But Golan said the department will publish a schedule of
when it intends to make such a submission “later this summer.”

“We believe that submission of our license application
should not be driven by artificial dates,” Golan said.

The NRC must sign off on the plan before Yucca Mountain can
begin accepting waste from the nation’s 103 nuclear power
plants.

Spent fuel from U.S. nuclear plants — which supply about
20 percent of U.S. electricity — is piling up. More than
50,000 tons (45,500 metric tons) of it is stored at over 100
temporary locations in 39 states.

The administration hoped to open the site in 2010 and allow
77,000 tons (70,000 metric tons) of waste to be stored deep
underground.

On another front, the Environmental Protection Agency hopes
to issue a proposal by year-end that would assure safe
radiation doses from the site for 1 million years, which would
satisfy a court order that threatens to derail the project.

Bill Wehrum, acting assistant administrator for air and
radiation for the Environmental Protection Agency, told the
committee his agency hopes to finish its proposal by year end.

Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat and ardent opponent of
the site for safety reasons, told the panel that the repository
“will never be built because the project is mired in
scientific, safety and technical problems.”

Reid proposed handling nuclear waste through “dry cask
storage,” a process that would allow nuclear reactors to store
waste on-site. He and Senator John Ensign have introduced a
bill requiring nuclear utilities to use the casks.

Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate energy panel,
said the project needs to move to the licensing stage, and
issued a report titled “Yucca Mountain: The Most Studied Real
Estate on the Planet.”