The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to act on the bill today.

Hatch said White House Chief of Staff Andy Card assured him the language in the bill requesting funding for staff positions to review and possibly defend waste transit plans was not what the administration intended and that it would not be in the final bill.

"I remain firmly opposed to any shipment of spent nuclear fuel to the state of Utah and appreciate the administration's recognition that the PFS proposal to do so is contrary to the nation's nuclear waste policy," Bennett said.

Bennett has added language to the Senate's version stating the committee "denies funding for new positions to administer activities related to shipment of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to a private interim storage facility."

The House language runs counter to assurances by former Secretary of Interior Spencer Abraham, who wrote a letter to Utah officials pledging that no federal funds would be expended on the PFS proposal.

The move is seen by some in the Utah delegation as a stealth maneuver by PFS supporters similar to an unsuccessful attempt by opponent Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who last year quietly tried to insert language in a defense bill that would have designated lands around the PFS site as wilderness, thereby blocking the construction of a rail spur needed to transport the waste.

Bishop's efforts were blocked during a conference committee resolution of the bill by Republican senators who were opposed to adding new language during the negotiation process. Bishop is attempting the same legislation this year, but is doing so openly and much earlier in the process.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is poised to grant PFS a license to store spent nuclear fuel in above-ground casks for up to 40 years in what is seen as temporary storage pending the completion of a permanent site at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The earliest that delay-plagued site could open is 2012.

Officials are trying to resolve court setbacks that ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to revisit radiation standards used to design the facility. Investigations are also under way into allegations that government scientists falsified data related to water studies at Yucca Mountain.

Utah's two senators are holding hope in a letter from eight of nine members of the PFS coalition that they will not proceed with PFS as long as Yucca Mountain is open for business.

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com