Reid isn't backing plan to block Utah N-waste

The other difference is that the Bishop language has the support of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which carries a lot of weight with key members of the conference committee. Last year, there were members of the conference committee opposed to the Bishop language simply because there was a perception that SUWA was opposed.

Reid and his Republican counterpart in Nevada, Sen. John Ensign, are taking a different approach: If they can persuade their colleagues to leave the waste at nuclear power plants around the country, there will be no need for Yucca Mountain or Skull Valley.

They continue to muster bipartisan Senate support for a bill that calls for spent nuclear fuel to be stored at nuclear power plants instead of at Yucca Mountain.

But the Reid-Ensign legislation is considered a long-shot, at best, and it would certainly not deter the White House from pursuing a permanent storage solution at Yucca Mountain. On Wednesday, President Bush, speaking at a Maryland nuclear power plant, again called for a revitalization of the nation's nuclear energy industry.

Bush said the United States has not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s. During that same time, France built 58, and China has eight under construction with plans for at least 40 more.

"There is a growing consensus that more nuclear power will lead to a cleaner, safer nation," Bush said. "In the 21st century, our nation will need more electricity, more safe, clean, reliable electricity. It is time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again."

But what Bush did not address is the nation's stalemate over what to do with the nuclear waste generated by existing plants, not to mention a fleet of new power plants. Even if Yucca Mountain is built — and it is years behind schedule and embroiled in scandal — the facility deep inside a Nevada mountain would be full with just the waste that exists today.

And that has critics speculating that the industry needs both Yucca Mountain and PFS to accommodate all the nuclear waste.

The Department of Energy is expected to submit a license application to the NRC for Yucca Mountain by the end of the year.

But with Yucca Mountain delayed until at least 2012, if not longer, PFS is pushing forward with an interim storage site in Utah. If the NRC grants PFS a license and the state challenges the decision in federal court, the PFS project would still be years ahead of Yucca Mountain.

Utah officials had hoped they had found a silver bullet to kill the project when Gary Lanthrum, director of the DOE's transportation program, said the welded canisters to be used at Skull Valley would not be acceptable at Yucca Mountain and were outside the current contract between the utilities and DOE.

The state jumped on that statement, arguing that the Utah-bound canisters would remain permanently in Utah if they were not accepted at Yucca Mountain — an issue that federal licensing hearings had not considered.

But the NRC was unconvinced. "Utah's thinly supported new contention does not justify reopening the adjudicatory record and restarting our hearing process this late in a protracted, 8-year-old proceeding," the commission wrote in its unanimous ruling earlier this week.

Industry and DOE officials have long maintained that the packaging issue is a technical problem that can be easily corrected.

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com