Vote on Senate nuclear waste bill seen early Oct

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

Friday September 17, 3:45 pm Eastern Time

Vote on Senate nuclear waste bill seen early Oct

WASHINGTON, Sept 17 (Reuters) - A Senate vote on a nuclear waste 
disposal bill is expected to take place in early October, after being 
bumped off next week's calendar, a legislative source said Friday.  

A spokesman for Sen. Frank Murkowski, chairman of the Senate Energy 
and Natural Resources Committee, said it appeared that action on the 
Alaska Republican's bill would ``be in early October.''  

The legislation is aimed at ending years of debate and legal 
wrangling over what to do with thousands of tons of highly 
radioactive spent nuclear fuel, currently stored at more than 100 
commercial nuclear power plants across the country.  

Murkowski's committee has approved the bill, which calls for the 
construction later next decade of a permanent nuclear waste
repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., around 90 miles from Las Vegas.

The Clinton administration opposes the plan, since Murkowski's bill 
authorizes the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and not the U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency, to set a radiation exposure standard 
for the proposed repository.  

The White House has promised a veto if the final version of the waste 
bill, which eventually must be reconciled with a pending House bill, 
blocks the EPA from setting the limits.  

Murkowski has said repeatedly that the EPA could set exposure limits 
that could prohibit storing the spent fuel in the Nevada desert. EPA 
insists that it has the expertise and the traditional role for 
setting the standard.  

A spokesman for the nuclear industry said even with the debate over 
the NRC-EPA, the Murkowski bill represents a compromise with the 
Clinton administration.  

``In general, it is a significant compromise on what the 
administration has said that it wanted to see,'' said Steve Kerekes, 
spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.  

Nuclear utilities want nuclear waste moved, as the law states, from 
their reactor sites to a permanent storage facility. The Murkowski 
legislation would have the Department of Energy (DOE) take control of 
the waste at reactors until the Yucca Mountain site is ready.  

Previously, nuclear utilities and many lawmakers pushed for a 
temporary storage site until a permanent one could be constructed. 
Murkowski dropped such language from his bill, but the pending House 
legislation still calls for an interim site by 2003, a point that is 
deeply opposed by the White House.  

DOE is exploring whether to confirm Yucca Mountain as the permanent 
repository and a final recommendation is due in 2001.

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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