Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles
Times
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May 3, 2000, Wednesday, Home Edition
SECTION: Part A; Part 1; Page 18; Metro Desk
LENGTH: 603 words
HEADLINE:
SENATE REJECTS GOP BID FOR NUCLEAR WASTE SITE;
ENERGY: REPUBLICANS
COME CLOSE BUT FAIL TO GET VOTES TO OVERRIDE CLINTON VETO. LEADERS VOW TO TRY
AGAIN.
BYLINE: ART PINE, TIMES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
The Senate on Tuesday failed to override President Clinton's veto of a bill
that would have required the Energy Department to proceed with construction of a
single national site in Nevada where nuclear waste would be stored permanently.
The close vote ended the latest effort by Republican lawmakers to force
the administration to use the Yucca Mountain site. The count
was 64 to 35 to override, just two votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed.
But the issue probably will become more heated over the next months. Although
such veto votes traditionally settle legislative disputes for the entire
congressional session, Republican leaders indicated that they may bring the
measure up again later this year.
In the meantime, analysts said that
the impasse probably means that the nation's nuclear power utilities will
increase dumping of their waste at local storage sites, while passing on costs
to consumers.
Congress has designated Yucca Mountain as
a national nuclear waste-disposal facility. But the Energy Department has been
postponing construction of the project until it can decide whether the area is
environmentally suitable.
The site is 237 miles northeast of Los Angeles
and 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The measure Clinton vetoed called
for nuclear waste now stored temporarily at 72 sites in 31 states to be sent to
the Nevada facility, beginning in 2007.
The legislation would have
limited the role that the Environmental Protection Agency could play in helping
to set standards for how much radiation the waste facility could emit.
Clinton objected to that and to the fact that the legislation did not
provide authority for the Energy Department to take title to state
waste-disposal areas--a move that the administration argues would provide a
"responsible" way of dealing with the problem in the short term.
Republicans initially had included such a provision in the bill but
dropped it to win more Democratic votes. The nation's governors had lobbied
against the provision for fear that it would eliminate their leverage in moving
the waste out of their states.
Leading the bid to sustain the veto were
Nevada's two senators, Harry Reid and Richard H. Bryan, both Democrats.
California's two senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, also Democrats,
voted with them.
Overall, 32 Democrats and three Republicans voted with
the administration, while 51 Republicans and 13 Democrats voted to override the
veto.
The fight over where--and how--to build a national nuclear
waste-disposal site has been raging for 12 years, pitting the industry against
environmentalists over what kinds of standards should be followed to limit
radiation exposure in the area.
The Energy Department has said that it
plans to decide next year whether to go ahead with the project, with hopes of
completing a national nuclear-waste repository by 2010.
Sen. Frank H.
Murkowski (R-Alaska), a key sponsor of the legislation, warned that the veto
would hurt the nuclear power industry. "We cannot allow it to strangle on its
own waste without a viable alternative," he told the Senate.
But Reid
argued that the utilities can safely store their waste on local sites "for 100
years--scientists agree on that." Bryan later told reporters that "there's no
crisis here," as the industry contends.
Summarizing his view of the
outcome of Tuesday's Senate vote, he said, "The American public, 1, special
interests, 0."
With the override effort unsuccessful in the Senate, the
House will not need to vote on the override. The House had passed the waste
storage bill, 253 to 167.
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC-MAP:
Yucca mountain site / Los Angeles Times
LOAD-DATE: May 3, 2000 
