House okays Yucca site for spent nuclear fuel

Late last month, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 1270, requiring the federal government to consolidate the nation's spent fuel from nuclear power plants in an interim facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev. by the year 2000.

Nuclear waste, in the form of radioactive spent fuel rods, is currently being stored at more than 70 different sites in 34 states. In 1982, Congress approved the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requiring the Department of Energy (DOE) to begin permanently disposing of commercial nuclear waste by 1998.

Yucca Mountain, located in Lincoln County 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was identified as the interim repository in 1987.

Last year, in a lawsuit filed by the electric utility industry, a federal court ruled that DOE must take title to the waste as mandated, by January 1998. Another pending lawsuit is seeking a ruling that would impose a legal obligation on DOE to actually accept the waste. DOE is arguing that under current law it has no authority to store interim waste. H.R. 1270 would give DOE that authority.

While storage at the various sites is presumably safe, this was not supposed to be a long-term solution, and nuclear power plants are running out of adequate storage space.

NACo supports a single, interim storage site at Yucca Mountain as a cheaper and safer alternative until a permanent repository is identified and ready, which by most estimates will not be until 2010.

Moreover, adequate state and local emergency response programs are already in place, and with some federal planning assistance, should be capable of safeguarding communities along the transportation routes to the site.

Concerned that the designation of Yucca Mountain as an interim storage site will prejudice DOE's study on the viability of Yucca Mountain as the permanent repository site, President Clinton has promised to veto the bill.

The passage of H.R. 1270 sets up a conference committee with the Senate, which passed its version of the bill (S. 104) in April. Because the Senate bill did not capture the two-thirds majority needed to override the promised presidential veto, the fate of the Yucca Mountain site and the interim storage of nuclear waste continue to remain uncertain.