WASHINGTON — The Energy Department can consider a private facility for temporarily storing nuclear waste before the federal repository at Yucca Mountain is ready to receive it, the House Appropriations Committee decided Wednesday.

That means Private Fuel Storage, a nuclear waste storage site in Tooele County, could be an option for interim nuclear waste storage if Congress allows the Energy Department to go ahead with temporary storage.

The committee approved the $30 billion energy and water spending bill and its accompanying report, which slammed the Energy Department's progress — or lack thereof — on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project in Nevada. The report said the committee would accept any further delay in the Yucca project "only if it accompanied interim storage beginning this decade."

The report said the department needs to address the problems of accumulating fuel at commercial nuclear reactors and the government's growing liability for the waste awaiting permanent storage. It included $30 million for interim waste storage if Congress would authorize the department to move ahead with it.

"The only constructive way to address these problems in the near term is for the department actually to begin to move spent fuel away from commercial reactor site and into some version of interim storage," the report said. "These interim storage sites may be located on DOE property, but the department should also investigate the availability of other federal and private sites."

PFS officials are being cautious in their assessment of recent talk on interim storage. Spokeswoman Sue Martin said the consortium would be willing to work with the DOE.

But this week's debate is different from the smaller debate that took place on interim storage last year. House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Chairman David Hobson, R-Ohio, told Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, during a floor debate a year ago, "I do not see any reason for the secretary to consider making a private site or a site on tribal land into a DOE site for interim storage. My intent is for the secretary to evaluate storage options at existing DOE sites."

Bishop and the rest of the Utah House delegation sent a letter to Hobson last month reminding him of the statement.

Utah's congressional delegation and the state government strongly opposed any plan to bring nuclear waste in Utah for storage. Beyond transportation risks associated with taking waste through the state, once waste is brought to Utah the fear is it would stay there permanently.

Private Fuel Storage, a licensed nuclear waste storage site on Goshute Indian Reservation land in Tooele County, has asked the Energy Department to pay to move commercial spent fuel to the site and is still talking with utilities to see if any would be interested in helping finance the project. Several original investors backed out last year and the site still faces transportation obstacles.