WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) today fired off a letter to the Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission demanding a written explanation of why the agency refers to Yucca Mountain as a "permanent repository" in a pending environmental impact statement for a proposed interim storage site in Utah.

"I was dismayed that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would automatically consider Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository without a scientific basis. This implies that the NRC has already made a decision to license Yucca Mountain. If the answer I receive from the NRC is not acceptable, I fully intend to ask the Clinton-Gore Administration to rein in this loose cannon agency. This is the reason that I've fought so hard to ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency sets the groundwater standards for any long term high level nuclear waste repository," Reid said.

Reid's letter comes in the wake of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the construction of an interim nuclear waste storage facility on the Reservation of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians. In the draft EIS, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission repeatedly refers to Yucca Mountain as "the permanent national repository."

"I hope that you will agree that it is absolutely inappropriate for the NRC to refer to Yucca Mountain, NV as the permanent national repository as you do in this Draft EIS.," Reid declared in the letter to Richard Meserve, NRC Chairman. "As far as I am concerned, we are a very long way from making any decision concerning the fate of high level nuclear waste in America. Sadly, it appears that the NRC has made its judgment without the benefit of sound science or proper consideration as required by law."