Nevada Senators Fight Plan For Nuclear Waste Disposal

The Senate will open debate today on a bill requiring that nuclear waste from Hanford and other reactors be sent to Nevada.

The bill has fierce opposition, particularly from Nevada senators.

But Idaho Sen. Larry Craig said he and other co-sponsors have the votes to block a filibuster.

“This is a major national environmental issue, and we need to muster the political will to tackle this problem head-on,” said Craig, a Republican.

Debate could continue for more than a week.

Craig has joined with Sens. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Bennett Johnston, D-La., to push a plan to set up an interim storage facility for high-level radioactive waste at the Nevada Test Site near Yucca Mountain.

A permanent repository is already authorized on that site by 1998, but supporters of the new bill said planning is way behind schedule and a temporary facility is needed right away.

“Rather than letting this dangerous radioactive material continue to accumulate … the responsible approach is to store it at one safe and monitored facility at a unique site so remote that the government used it to explode nuclear weapons for 50 years,” Craig wrote last week in a letter to senators.

President Clinton has threatened to veto the legislation because it interferes with the administration’s nuclear waste policy for permanent, geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste.

Under Craig’s bill, most nuclear waste would be transported by train to Nevada from nuclear reactors in 41 states. The rest would be moved by truck.

Opponents of the bill, most notably Nevada Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, argued that the risk of transporting such vast amounts of high-level radioactive materials is far greater than the need for an interim facility.

“Every town and community along the transportation rail lines would be in danger as lethal radioactive waste barrels through,” Reid said.

Bryan argued that spent fuel can be stored safely at the nuclear reactors that generate it for “at least 100 years.” Both vowed to block every attempt to move the bill forward.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent board of scientists appointed by the president, sees no immediate need for an interim storage facility.

“But somewhere between 2005 and 2010, we are going to have a lot of reactors shutting down because of inadequate storage facilities,” said board spokesman Frank Randall.

, DataTimes