White House still against House nuclear waste

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Friday February 12, 12:08 am Eastern Time

White House still against House nuclear waste

WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Legislation to build a temporary 
nuclear waste dump site in Nevada for storing thousands of tons of 
highly radioactive, spent nuclear rods drew renewed opposition on 
Wednesday from the White House.  

At a hearing before a House Commerce Committee panel, a 
Clinton administration official decried a proposal to set up a 
temporary storage site at the Nevada Test Range by 2003 until a 
permanent repository is approved and built in the Yucca Mountain 
region of the state, near Las Vegas.  

A permanent site would not be ready to start collecting waste until 
2010.

Lake Barrett, acting director of civilian radioactive waste 
management for the U.S. Department of Energy, said a temporary 
site would divert money and resources from Yucca Mountain.  

``If the department has responsibilities to comply with the interim 
storage facility and repository funding provisions and schedules, 
enactment of the bill could result in a funding gap of substantially 
over $1 billion,'' Barrett said.  

The Senate and House in 1998 passed a bill requiring DOE to build 
the interim site in Nevada, but the legislation never made it through 
the legislative process.  

President Bill Clinton had vowed to veto last year's bill, and Barrett 
said he would recommend, along with Energy Secretary Bill 
Richardson, that the president veto the current proposal.  

Republican congressional leaders, nuclear utilities and a number of 
states have charged the DOE with collecting $15 billion in 
consumer fees since 1982 for storing spent fuel, but not spending 
the money for its intended purpose.  

``We have to make sure utility ratepayers who have deposited 
billions into the Nuclear Waste Fund get what they paid for, timely 
disposal of the spent reactor fuel,'' said House Commerce 
Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley, a Virginia Republica.  

Currently, around 30,000 metric tons of spent fuel is being stored 
on-site at around 75 nuclear plants across the country.

States and utilities sued DOE, saying the law ordered them to start 
disposing of spent fuel no later than Jan. 31, 1998.  

The Supreme Court in 1998 let stand a U.S. appeals court ruling 
that refused to force the DOE to start taking waste, but did allow 
utilities to seek compensation for storage costs.  

In mid-December, the DOE in a viability assessment called Yucca 
Mountain a ``promising'' site for the nation's permanent nuclear 
waste repository, pending more research on its safety.  

A final recommendation is due in 2001.

DOE said costs for building and maintaining a permanent site 
would be covered mostly by the continued collection of the waste 
fund fee, a one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour charge collected 
from nuclear energy consumers.  

Environmental groups and Nevada legislators expressed strong 
opposition to temporary and permanent site plans.  

Nevada Democratic Sen. Richard Bryan said Yucca Mountain is 
prone to earthquakes, and scientific studies showed water may be 
able to seep into the proposed permanent storage location, 
possibly contaminating the ground much more rapidly than the 
thousands of years the fuel would be radioactive. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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