Thursday, December 15, 2005
| House, Senate bills call for on-site nuclear waste storage Utahns hope passage will doom a Skull Valley site WASHINGTON — Nuclear waste would stay in containers at nuclear power plants, versus moving it to Utah or Nevada, under identical bills introduced Wednesday in the Senate and House. Utah GOP Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch and the state's three House members hope the bills' main intent — to stop the proposed federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas — will also stop waste from moving to Tooele County's Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation as well. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., have worked to finalize details on the legislation for a year. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, introduced the House version, with the rest of the Nevada and Utah House members as co-sponsors. "I've always said that storage on site is the right scientific answer, but differing state laws have made it impossible," Bennett said in a statement. "The Reid legislation resolves this problem and buys us time to craft a sensible national policy on nuclear energy." Matheson said keeping it on site for the next few decades is the right decision. "The locations are going to have waste anyway," Matheson said. He said that when Congress passed the law in 1982 creating the Yucca site, dry cask storage was not even an option. He said new technologies for storing waste came on in the 20 years since Congress passed the law and more efficient ways can come in the future. The Spent Nuclear Fuel Security Act of 2005 would allow utilities to use money now earmarked to move waste to Yucca to transfer waste to dry storage. The Energy Department would take responsibility for the waste once stored in the dry cask, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would have to create rules on how to transfer the waste. Nuclear utilities have been waiting since 1998 for the Energy Department to take responsibility for used fuel and move it to Nevada, but financial, legal and scientific problems have delayed this for years. Nuclear power users have been paying a fee into the Nuclear Waste Fund, an account created in 1982 to fund the repository, but $17 billion remains that has not been spent. Meanwhile, the power plants have had to find other ways of storing their waste, including creating a temporary storage site proposed by Private Fuel Storage for Skull Valley. The government faces hefty liabilities for leaving waste with the utilities. Commercial utilities have filed numerous lawsuits against the department for failing to take the waste. Companies also are frustrated with paying into a fund for a site that has yet to open while also spending money to solve their individual waste problems. The bill would remove the liability because the government would take responsibility for the waste and give the utilities the means to store waste on-site. On-site storage is said to be safe for at least 100 years, according to Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen, so this will buy the country time to find a real nuclear waste solution. "In fact, it is clear that Yucca Mountain will never open," according to Reid's summary of the bill. "Taking title to spent nuclear fuel fulfills the federal government's obligation and commitment to retake control over nuclear materials." If signed into law, commercial power plants would have six years to move nuclear waste from storage pools to dry cask storage or six years after the waste is produced, according to the bill. In a proposed nuclear waste amendment to the energy bill earlier this year, Hatch and Bennett included a provision to study feasibility of the department "taking possession" of nuclear waste on-site at nuclear reactors but postponed the amendment, and the bill was passed without it. "This bill is a way to take the pressure off the need for Skull Valley," Hatch said in a statement. "My support for it does not change my support for Yucca Mountain, although it is clear that I am pursuing other reasonable or acceptable approaches to solving the disposal problem. Rather, it shows that I stand with the senators from Nevada and Utah in signaling that the government must develop a nuclear waste disposal policy, the sooner the better." Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, said the bill is a good idea and a good first step, but more needs to be done. "We need to adopt a national policy of reprocessing this material, or the political tug-of-war over where this stuff should be stored will not end," Cannon said. "And, as long as that debate continues, Utah and other Western states will remain at risk of becoming dumping grounds." Cannon said he plans to introduce a bill next year that would have the government take responsibility for the waste on-site but also establish a reprocessing plan. "We can then stop haggling over where to best let it pile up. Only then will we be safe from the political temptation to make the west desert a solution to storage problems," he said. Yucca Mountain supporters oppose the bill filed Wednesday, saying it does nothing to solve the waste disposal problem. Brian J. O'Connell, the director of the Nuclear Waste Project Office at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said this does not permanently dispose of the waste and does nothing for the Energy Department and Defense Department waste, mainly from nuclear weapons construction. Weapons waste is destined for Yucca as well. O'Connell said there is no indication of how much this will ultimately cost or how it would be run. He estimated about 40 people might be needed for security and management at the power plants just for the waste portion. He said the government would likely hire contractors to do this, which in the end could end up being the power plant itself. "This makes security more difficult," he said. O'Connell said using Nuclear Waste Fund money for this "cripples" the repository program and could have large implications for the future of nuclear power. "This, in effect, says we're not going to solve the waste problem," he said. In addition to pursuing the bill filed Wednesday, Utah's members of Congress say they will continue to work other avenues to thwart the temporary storage facility proposed for Skull Valley.
E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com
|