Meanwhile, the Yucca Mountain project remains Congress' preferred nuclear waste repository. In a compromise Friday lawmakers budgeted $577 million this fiscal year for Yucca Mountain, the same amount as last year but about a third less than the Energy Department said was required to keep the nuclear waste storage program on track.

A Democratic staff member familiar with the Utah wilderness negotiations pointed fingers at still others in Congress.

"Harry Reid didn't need to have the bill killed because it had plenty of opposition from others on both sides of the aisle," the staffer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Truth be told, it was (Sen. John) Warner who killed it."

Warner, a Republican from Virginia and the chairman of Armed Services Committee, whose daughter works for an environmental group, was a member of the House-Senate conference committee working out differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. The irony is that Utah's environmental organizations supported the legislation.

Also opposing the bill was Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Warner's office did not return calls, and the Levin staff member who dealt with the issue was out of the office and unavailable for comment.

One House aide pointed out that both Michigan and Virginia are home to nuclear power plants in dire need of a place to store tons of spent nuclear fuel rods, which would explain why Warner and Levin would join together to kill the legislation.

"And never underestimate the nuclear power lobby back here," she said.

Three nuclear power plants in Michigan are owned by a company that is part of Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of mostly Eastern nuclear power utilities that have a contract with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes to store 40,000 tons of nuclear waste in above-ground canisters on tribal lands about 70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

No Virginia plants are listed on the roster of PFS facilities.

Utah's Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett lobbied their Senate colleagues long and hard to leave the wilderness language in the bill, but to no avail.

The fact Hatch and Bennett could not sway even their Republican colleagues was seen by one House insider as "troubling," perhaps an indication that lawmakers from Eastern states with nuclear power plants are quietly supporting the Goshute proposal as a "fallback" in the event Yucca Mountain is delayed or canceled.

The Utah site would be "temporary" storage inasmuch as the contract is for 20 years with an option for a 20-year renewal. But Utah officials have been fighting the proposal, fearing that temporary storage would become permanent and citing a litany of environmental and public health concerns.