Gov't Ownership of Waste Sought

["Mario Iannaccone" <miannacc@dhhs.state.nh.us>]

07:42 PM ET 06/15/99

 Gov't Ownership of Waste Sought
 By H. JOSEF HEBERT=
 Associated Press Writer=
        WASHINGTON (AP) _ In what could be a break in the five-year
 stalemate over what to do with commercial nuclear waste, a leading
 Republican senator is offering a proposal that would keep the waste
 at reactor sites, but shift ownership to the federal government.
        The proposal by Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, reflected a
 departure from the argument he and many other Republican senators
 have long made that the government should move the waste to a
 yet-to-be-built temporary storage facility in Nevada.
        The proposal was expected to be voted on Wednesday by the Senate
 Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Murkowski chairs.
 Murkowski said he believes he has enough support to get it
 approved.
        But Murkowski also has conditions on the proposal, including
 that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, instead of the
 Environmental Protection Agency, set radiation exposure standards
 at a future permanent waste burial facility. The EPA has
 traditionally pushed for more stringent standards, including a
 requirement to protect groundwater that the nuclear industry claims
 is impossible to meet.
        The dispute over exposure standards was likely to pose a
 significant problem and could determine whether the Clinton
 administration will go along with the compromise, some
 congressional sources said.
        Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the committee's ranking
 Democrat, will vote against Murkowski's proposal unless the EPA has
 jurisdiction over the exposure standards, an aide said yesterday.
        Energy Secretary Bill Richardson first proposed in February that
 the government accept title to the waste kept at nuclear plants
 around the country, but that the waste remain at the reactor sites
 until a permanent burial facility on Yucca Mountain in Nevada is
 approved and completed.
        The industry, which argues the government promised to assume
 responsibility for the waste, rejected the idea. A number of suits
 are being litigated over the government's failure to dispose of the
 more than 40,000 tons of highly radioactive used reactor fuel now
 kept at plants in 34 states. The waste is growing at the rate of
 2,000 tons a year.
        The issue has stymied Congress for more than five years.
 Repeated attempts to pass legislation requiring a temporary storage
 facility in Nevada have failed, largely because the White House has
 threatened to veto it.
        President Clinton has maintained that no temporary storage
 facility should be built because it would ease pressure to develop
 a permanent burial ground at Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert
 about 90 miles from Las Vegas. The Yucca site is being evaluated,
 but even if approved, it will not be ready to accept shipments
 until 2010, and possibly later.
        Murkowski and Richardson discussed the waste issue at length
 during a recent trip to Alaska. Murkowski said he would prefer the
 waste be taken off utilities' hands as the government promised, but
 that there's no chance such legislation could pass and survive a
 veto.
        ``We've been there and done that,'' said Murkowski in an
 interview, referring to repeated efforts to pass legislation to
 build a temporary storage facility in Nevada that fell short
 because of the veto threat.

Submitted by,
Mario Iannaccone,
Health Physicist
miannacc@dhhs.state.nh.us


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