http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020215/ts/utilities_yucca_dc.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday chose Nevada's remote Yucca Mountain as the site for a facility to store 70,000 tons of nuclear waste, prompting howls of protest and setting off a pitched battle with the state likely to end up in Congress.
``I consider the Yucca Mountain site qualified for application for a construction authorization for a repository,'' Bush told leaders of Congress in a letter informing them of his decision. ``Therefore, I now recommend the Yucca Mountain site for this purpose.''
Critics of the plan, including Nevada politicians, worry that radioactive material might seep into the ground, posing health risks for residents, and cite the risks of transporting nuclear waste over great distances.
The site in the Nevada desert 90 miles from Las Vegas would store 70,000 tons of radioactive material from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants for an estimated 10,000 years.
Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican, said he was ''outraged ... that this decision would go forward with so many unanswered questions.''
In a statement, Guinn pledged to ``exhaust every option and press our legal case to the limit.'' Nevada has raised a warchest of $5.4 million to fight the decision.
Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid (news) reacted strongly against the decision, saying Bush ``betrayed our trust'' by breaking a campaign promise not to proceed without sound scientific study.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) disputed the charge, saying Bush's decision ``is based on sound science'' and came after decades of scientific study and a determination by Energy Secretary Spence Abraham that the site can be safely used.
Reid warned the plan would require the equivalent of 100,000 nuclear waste-laden trucks or 20,000 rail cars moving through 43 states from existing storage sites to Nevada.
'DIRTY BOMBS'
``President Bush has dropped the equivalent of 100,000 dirty bombs on America,'' Reid said.
Abraham replied: ``The waste is already closer to the people every day of the week than it is moving past the community for five or ten minutes. It's going to be transported anyway.''
By law, Nevada's state government has the right to reject Bush's decision. The battle would then end up in Congress, where a simple majority vote would decide the case within 90 days, no filibuster allowed.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must also approve a license for the site, which would likely face legal challenges.
House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, approved Bush's recommendation as a better alternative than having nuclear waste ``scattered across the country in over 130 various sites.''
But his Democratic counterpart, Richard Gephardt, said the decision was driven by politics rather than sound science, and pledged to channel his party's efforts to ``overturn the administration's decision in Congress.''
A storage site has long been a political hot potato in Washington, with no state wanting the responsibility -- or burden -- of storing radioactive waste. A decision is overdue. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act mandated that a repository be ready to receive waste in 1998.
``The president recognizes that the law now gives Nevada the opportunity to disprove the recommendation and, if they do, then the Congress will have an opportunity to act. After two decades, the time has come to resolve this issue once and for all,'' Fleischer said.
GEOLOGICALLY STABLE SITE?
Spent nuclear fuel, high-level radioactive waste and excess plutonium are now stored at over 131 sites in 39 states.
Abraham, in a conference call with reporters, said radioactive waste is quickly surpassing storage capacity and makeshift storage methods will result if a single facility is not built. He pointed out an energy company has been negotiating with a Utah Indian tribe to store waste on reservation land.
``That's what's going to be the alternative if we don't move forward. It's going to go from a safe, secure intelligent national approach into a variety of makeshift approaches,'' he said.
The General Accounting Office (news - web sites), the main investigative arm of Congress, and the Energy Department's inspector general have both voiced concerns about Yucca, but Abraham said those concerns can be allayed while the process moves forward.
The Energy Department hopes to have Yucca site operational by 2010.
The Energy Department contended that Yucca Mountain is a geologically stable site, positioned in a closed groundwater basin and isolated on federally controlled land.
It says the repository would be housed about 1,000 feet underground, and located further from any metropolitan area than most of the less secure, temporary nuclear waste storage sites that exist today.