This leaves the spending bills and other nuclear-waste legislation in limbo until the lawmakers come back to allow them to advance. Any bill left at the end of this session would need to be resubmitted at the beginning of the new Congress that starts in January.

Domenici told reporters after the hearing that he may introduce another, simpler Yucca bill he would hope to get through Congress while tackling the temporary storage issue in the spending bill only.

Sproat said temporary storage is something that needs to be discussed because "there is not one solution here that fits all."

"There is no one answer," Sproat said, adding that there are legal, political and financial matters affecting any decision to open or locate a temporary nuclear-waste storage site.

He is not quite convinced that the country needs interim storage but said the department would follow what Congress says.

Sproat also told the panel that working on temporary storage sites, if the responsibility fell to his office, could take management responsibility and time away from working on Yucca.

At this time, the Energy Department itself is not asking for temporary storage policy or anything to be built but Yucca Mountain.

PFS has told the Energy Department it is open to the idea of working with the government by using federal money to ship and store nuclear waste in Utah, but the department has yet to respond to the request. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has consistently said that PFS is not part of the department's waste-manage- ment plan.

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E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com