WASHINGTON — Nuclear waste would stay in containers at nuclear power plants, versus moving it to Utah or Nevada, under identical bills introduced Wednesday in the Senate and House.

Utah GOP Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch and the state's three House members hope the bills' main intent — to stop the proposed federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas — will also stop waste from moving to Tooele County's Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation as well.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., have worked to finalize details on the legislation for a year. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, introduced the House version, with the rest of the Nevada and Utah House members as co-sponsors.

"I've always said that storage on site is the right scientific answer, but differing state laws have made it impossible," Bennett said in a statement. "The Reid legislation resolves this problem and buys us time to craft a sensible national policy on nuclear energy."

Matheson said keeping it on site for the next few decades is the right decision. "The locations are going to have waste anyway," Matheson said.

He said that when Congress passed the law in 1982 creating the Yucca site, dry cask storage was not even an option. He said new technologies for storing waste came on in the 20 years since Congress passed the law and more efficient ways can come in the future.

The Spent Nuclear Fuel Security Act of 2005 would allow utilities to use money now earmarked to move waste to Yucca to transfer waste to dry storage. The Energy Department would take responsibility for the waste once stored in the dry cask, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would have to create rules on how to transfer the waste.

Nuclear utilities have been waiting since 1998 for the Energy Department to take responsibility for used fuel and move it to Nevada, but financial, legal and scientific problems have delayed this for years. Nuclear power users have been paying a fee into the Nuclear Waste Fund, an account created in 1982 to fund the repository, but $17 billion remains that has not been spent. Meanwhile, the power plants have had to find other ways of storing their waste, including creating a temporary storage site proposed by Private Fuel Storage for Skull Valley.

The government faces hefty liabilities for leaving waste with the utilities. Commercial utilities have filed numerous lawsuits against the department for failing to take the waste. Companies also are frustrated with paying into a fund for a site that has yet to open while also spending money to solve their individual waste problems.