May 9, 2002 4 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – The House on Wednesday endorsed President Bush’s decision to send the country’s nuclear waste to Nevada, voting to override the state’s objections to a radioactive dump 90 miles from Las Vegas. Lawmakers rejected arguments that thousands of waste shipments across 43 states would pose safety and security risks. Supporters of the dump said the waste poses a bigger threat if kept at reactor sites around the country.

“Where are my colleagues who are advocates for states’ rights, local control,” asked Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., shortly before the House voted 306-117 to override Nevada’s objections to having the wastes forced on them.

The Senate plans three hearings this month on the site and will take up the issue this summer. Nevada lawmakers had expected the GOP-majority House to uphold Bush’s decision, and they are concentrating their efforts across the Capitol.

Under the current schedule, the first shipments would arrive in 2010 and continue for 24 years.

The president announced plans in February to seek a license to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste, most of it used fuel from the country’s 103 commercial power reactors, at Yucca Mountain, a ridge of volcanic rock in the Nevada desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nevada filed a formal objection, leaving the final say to Congress.

Supporters of the site said Yucca Mountain had been studied for two decades and at a cost of nearly $7 billion. They said a central storage facility would provide increased security for material that is to remain radioactive for 10,000 years.

“We should proceed with this scientifically proven safe single storage facility,” said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. The Nevada dump is preferable to “the current hodgepodge” of storage sites at reactors in 31 states, he said.

Hastert noted that Illinois has 11 nuclear reactors where used fuel is building up each year.

But Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, the House Democratic leader, said that even if the Nevada dump were opened, “We’d still have nuclear waste stored around the country decades from now.”

“It makes no sense to have all this material traveling across the country by truck and rail,” said Gephardt, whose home state probably would see many of the waste shipments pass through.

The Energy Department is leaning heavily toward rail transport, although completion of a final transportation plan is not expected until next year.

Nevada’s two representatives complained that the site supporters simply want to get the radioactive garbage out of their own states.

Nevada was picked in what Rep. Shelley Berkeley, D-Nev., called “the most political of decisions” because it was “a small state with a small congressional delegation.”

A 1987 law declared that only Yucca Mountain was to be studied as a potential repository for the growing used nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive wastes generated by the government’s nuclear weapons program. The private and federal waste is now at sites in 39 states, the Energy Department says.

Berkley said that despite the years of study, 293 technical issues about the sites are unresolved. The department says those issues would be resolved before or during the licensing process.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who recommended the site to Bush, has said he is convinced that Yucca Mountain will hold the waste safely and protect the environment for thousands of years.

“This vote indicates that the House overwhelmingly agrees that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should be the final arbiter in determining whether the site meets the stringent regulatory requirements. I believe that it does,” he said in a statement.

The site, as envisioned, would accept waste until 2034.

Even then, critics say, the site would not have enough room for all of the industry’s waste, with at least 44,000 tons still expected to be left in storage at power plants.

The cost of the project has been estimated at $58 billion for construction, waste shipments and the first 50 to 100 years of operation.

The administration said Tuesday it plans to ask for more money for research to reduce the waste volume and the cost of disposal.

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On the Net:

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board: http://www.nwtrb.gov/

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.rw.doe.gov/