WASHINGTON — If Congress approves a pending temporary storage plan for the nation's nuclear waste, it might overwhelm the government agency that would be in charge of regulating it, according to its chairman.

The House and Senate will decide later this year whether to adopt a temporary waste storage option that could move nuclear waste from commercial power reactors to regional sites until the federal site in Nevada would open.

New Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Dale Klein said the plan that could put up to 37 temporary sites across the country "would cause a burden on the NRC."

The commission knows how to regulate "at-reactor" storage, Klein said. The commission has approved numerous storage casks at nuclear power plants as companies still wait for the permanent federal storage at Nevada's Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The commission has also approved a license for Private Fuel Storage, a planned storage site in Tooele County supported by a handful of nuclear power utilities. PFS is currently looking for more investors to help construct the storage site as well as way to move the waste into Utah. Utah's congressional delegation and the state have been fighting the project.

Storing waste at reactors can be done safely, Klein said, but the sheer volume of the workload associated with evaluating potential interim storage sites would strain the NRC staff to the point where the work would need to go to contractors or the commission would have to make new hires.

Klein said the commission would follow whatever law Congress passed pertaining to the temporary storage of waste.

"It's not our job to determine what's preferable," Klein said.

Congress will come back in session after Labor Day and have to tackle a host of legislation, including the energy and water spending bills.

The Senate still needs an initial vote on its bill that contains $10 million to start a federal temporary storage program, which could include these regional storage sites. The Senate bill specifically disqualifies Utah from getting a federal site because PFS already has a license, but the bill does not prohibit companies from using PFS instead of a government waste facility.

The House passed its version of the energy and water spending bill, which contained $30 million for the temporary storage of nuclear waste, saying the government could consider private sites as well as federal facilities to store it.

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