"The most sensible action in the near-term is to require hardened on-site storage," she said.

Utah's entire congressional delegation has co-sponsored a bill with Nevada's congressional delegation that would allow the Energy Department to pay for on-site storage until the government found another storage solution beyond Yucca Mountain.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton said Wednesday that he would not support any interim storage proposal except putting waste temporarily in Nevada somewhere at the Yucca site until the waste would actually be put into the mountain.

"I don't want interim storage to be the stopping horse not to do Yucca Mountain," Barton said.

Nuclear utilities also do not want to see money taken away from Yucca and put toward interim projects.

"A dollar spent on interim storage is a dollar not spent on the repository," said Stan Wise, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, who testified on behalf of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

Wise and other nuclear industry officials argue that leaving nuclear waste on site does not fulfill the Nuclear Waste Policy Act's requirement of permanent geologic disposal, which is what Yucca Mountain would do.

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E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com