Copyright 1999 Star Tribune
Star Tribune
(Minneapolis, MN)
March 16, 1999, Tuesday, Metro Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 9A
LENGTH: 532 words
HEADLINE:
Another bill for nuclear waste facility is introduced;
Sen. Rod Grams and
two other Republican senators are sponsoring the legislation to build storage
space in Nevada.
BYLINE: Greg Gordon; Staff Writer
DATELINE: Washington, D.C.
BODY:
Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., and two GOP
colleagues Monday launched another attempt to win enactment of legislation
creating a temporary nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada.
They introduced their bill amid mounting legal
pressure on the government to belatedly honor its 1982 promise to begin
accepting the nuclear power industry's deadly radioactive waste by Jan. 31,
1998.
"I hope it doesn't take a crisis before we've
got enough brains in this institution to pass this legislation," said Grams,
noting that Twin Cities-based Northern States Power Co. is due to run out of
storage space at its Prairie Island nuclear plant in 2007. The
interim storage facility would open in 2003 under the bill proposed by Grams,
Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee, and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.
The House and Senate overwhelmingly passed similar
bills last session, but they stalled in the face of a veto threat from President
Clinton and resistance from House Republicans worried that passage might cost
the seats of Nevada's two GOP congressmen.
The
Republican-controlled Congress and the administration remain at loggerheads over
how to deal with the waste problem, even as nuclear utilities have asked the
Court of Federal Claims to award them billions of dollars in damages for breach
of contract.
Since 1982, the utilities have added a
small surcharge to monthly ratepayer bills and passed more than
$15 billion to a federal Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for
construction of a permanent repository, where the waste would be safely stored
for 10,000 years.
After years of technical and
political delays, it was not until December that the Energy Department found
Nevada's Yucca Mountain scientifically viable to serve as the
repository. The agency now plans to decide by 2001 whether Yucca is a suitable
site and to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must
weigh the risks of radioactive leaks or a major calamity stemming from geologic
shifts at Yucca in the centuries ahead.
Energy
Secretary Bill Richardson late last month laid out the administration's proposal
for containing the taxpayer damages from the delays in building a federal
storage facility. He called for the government to take title to the waste piling
up at 71 nuclear power plants across the country, leaving it in place until his
agency completes work on the Yucca repository in 2010.
After a news conference announcing their legislation,
Grams said he has received indications that House Republicans may not block the
bill this year. "I guess we're just going to have to run against that wall to
find out" the degree of opposition, he said.
Mike
McCarthy, administrator of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, a
Minnesota-based coalition of states seeking to force construction of a
repository, said there has been one important change in the dynamic this time: A
recent Court of Federal Claims ruling that the government is liable for the
failure to accept the industry's waste. "What the congressmen
now will consider is the cost of inaction," he said.
LOAD-DATE: March 17, 1999
