U.S. lawmakers slam government plan to take nuclear waste

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

Thursday February 25, 10:06 pm Eastern Time

U.S. lawmakers slam government plan to take nuclear waste  

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Thursday 
criticized an Energy Department proposal to take ownership of 
electric utilities' nuclear waste until a permanent disposal site is 
built more than a decade into the future.  

Under the proposal, outlined by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson 
at a U.S. Senate committee hearing, the department would take 
title to the waste only if utilities dropped a lawsuit seeking 
damages from the department for refusing to store the waste.  

Beginning a year ago, the Department of Energy was supposed to 
start taking 30,000 metric tons of spent fuel that is being stored on 
site at 72 nuclear plants across the country, as required by a 1982 
law.  

The DOE has already collected billions of dollars in storage fees 
from the utilities, but has refused to take any of the waste because 
a permanent storage site isn't ready.  

The department would use the fee revenue to pay for temporarily 
maintaining the storage sites at the utilities.

Sen. Frank Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and chairman of the 
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, cast doubt on 
the DOE proposal, especially since the department doesn't have a 
specific date on when it would remove the nuclear waste.  

``The bottom line is, unless utilities have an assurance DOE will 
begin removing waste by a specific date, this (Clinton) 
administration proposal will not solve the current problem: that 
waste continues to mount around the country,'' he said.  

The senator also said the cost of continuing to store nuclear waste 
on site at utilities, as called for under the DOE plan, would exceed 
the cost of building an interim storage facility near Yucca 
Mountain, Nevada, until a permanent site is ready there in 2010.  

Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, said the proposal, 
if implemented, would turn out to be ``a disaster'' for the federal 
government and speculated the waste would never be removed.  

``This just means you're (DOE) going to leave it (at the utilities) 
forever,'' he said.

Richardson said details of the proposal still need to be worked out 
and that DOE would comply with all state and federal 
environmental and safety requirements.  

He said he wants to work with lawmakers closely on developing the 
plan, as Congress must give the DOE the authority to take 
ownership of the nuclear waste.  

``I want to continue to examine this idea further and take a serious 
look at how such a proposal would be structured and paid for 
without imposing undue burden on either utility ratepayers or the 
taxpayers,'' Richardson said.  

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said it is ``implausible'' to 
think the DOE could manage 72 separate storage sites for nuclear 
waste currently run by utilities when the government can't agree to 
the location of a central depository.  

The Nuclear Energy Institute said the DOE proposal would 
undermine building a long-term, permanent storage site in Nevada.  

``The end game of this proposal is that billions of dollars committed 
from consumers since 1983 to pay for a disposal program will be 
siphoned away to pay for this short-term political fix,'' said Joe 
Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute.  

Many lawmakers support legislation to open a temporary storage 
site in 2003, but President Clinton has threatened to veto  
such a bill.

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

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