WASHINGTON — Sen. Orrin Hatch plans to reintroduce legislation today to block the shipment of nuclear waste to a private storage facility in Utah and has asked fellow Sen. Bob Bennett to be a co-sponsor.

Hatch, unlike Bennett and other members of the Utah congressional delegation and the governor, has refused to support a bill that would ban shipments of spent nuclear fuel rods through the West. Such a measure would block both the proposed Yucca Mountain permanent repository in Nevada and the temporary Private Fuel Storage repository planned for Skull Valley in Utah's Tooele County.

Bennett, who on Tuesday announced he was breaking ranks with Hatch, President Bush and other supporters of Yucca Mountain, said he is considering Hatch's request.

Coloring Bennett's decision will be his support for a nuclear waste plan proposed by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., are calling for leaving the spent fuel rods at nuclear power plants and eventually reprocessing them.

Hatch, R-Utah, made it clear he does not support that position.

The Bush administration "strongly supports Yucca Mountain. So if I join with Sen. Reid right now, that would alienate the administration and others who can help us the most right now," he said.

"We need to keep our options open," Hatch added Wednesday on the Doug Wright show, broadcast by KSL Radio. "Sen. Reid wants us to close off one of the only options open."

When Wright asked him when Utah could expect help from the administration, he replied, "Well, we have to give them a chance." Now that the PFS licensing has been ordered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent board, the matter becomes more of a political issue, he indicated.

Hatch's legislation calls on the secretary of energy to conduct a study into storage of spent nuclear fuel at Department of Energy sites around the country and into whether the federal government should take ownership of the wastes now being stored at more than 100 nuclear power plants.

The measure, which was introduced earlier this year as an amendment to the Energy Bill but was not voted on, also calls on DOE to conduct a study into the development of facilities to reprocess nuclear waste.

At the core of the legislation is a provision that "no spent nuclear fuel or related high-level material shall be deposited into, or transported to, a non-federally-owned, off-site facility."

That is a direct shot at Private Fuel Storage, the consortium of utilities that wants to store up to 44,000 tons of spent fuel on Goshute tribal lands in Tooele County. PFS has secured the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.