WASHINGTON, D.C. — Capping a 20-year struggle over the final resting place of the nation’s highly radioactive nuclear waste, the Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday to establish a national repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the Boston Globe reports.
The voice vote, which came after a 60-to-39 roll call on a key procedural issue, was a victory for both the Bush administration and the nuclear industry. President Bush officially nominated the Yucca site in February at the recommendation of his Department of Energy.
Now the fight will move from the states and Congress and into the courts, where opponents have filed lawsuits to stop the process. ”This battle’s not over,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the assistant Democratic leader. ”This is a skirmish in a war.”
The vote cleared the way for the Department of Energy to move forward on the project. Barring any further delays, a department spokesman said, the facility is scheduled to start accepting 70,000 pounds of highly-radioactive nuclear waste in 2010.
Critics of the selection argued that neither the site nor the process of getting the waste there is sufficiently secure.
”We’re moving 77,000 tons of hot nuclear waste through 39 states,” said the Senate majority leader, Thomas A. Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota. ”That is a dangerous proposition, and we, I believe, have minimized the concern about the implications of moving that much waste.”
In recent weeks, opponents have raised questions about transportation safety in the face of terrorism. The Environmental Working Group, for example, posted possible shipping routes on its Web site, noting the number of states and communities through which the waste would travel.
”Al Qaeda doesn’t need to buy nuclear material to smuggle a dirty bomb into our country; Congress is doing the hard work for them,” said Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, who called the resolution ”The Terrorism Facilitation Act.”
The Senate did not take a roll-call vote on finalizing the site, but decided to use a parliamentary vote as a test. When that motion to proceed passed, the resolution was passed on a voice vote, relieving senators from having to defend voting on the record in favor of the proposal.
Ensign was one of three Republicans to oppose the motion to proceed. Fifteen Democrats, including Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, voted in favor of the motion. Among the four Democratic senators most often mentioned as potential presidential candidates – Daschle, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina – only Edwards favored the legislation.
Assuming that the Yucca Mountain project moves forward as expected, hundreds of metric tons of spent radioactive fuel will begin winding their way from New England to Nevada, some of it traveling on Massachusetts highways and railways, according to the Department of Energy’s environmental reports.
Proponents contend that lower-grade nuclear waste has been shipped around the country without any accidents.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who appeared at a Republican caucus luncheon, promised that he would submit before the end of next year a transportation plan that would provide an ”effective first line of defense” against terrorist attacks.
Critics also argued that the actual Yucca facility has not been proved safe because it lies on an earthquake fault line and because studies are ongoing about how well the rock will contain the material.
Bush administration officials and other proponents argue that $4 billion has been spent studying the site for 20 years and that those studies show Yucca is safe.
Proponents also argued that delaying the process further could have terrible effects on the plants.
”If we don’t do this, do we go back to the beginning?” the Senate Republican leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, asked at the close of debate. ”The complications that would be caused, the irresponsible consequences of not passing this vote today, would be almost incomprehensible.”
The issue was first raised in 1982 when Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which dictated that the Department of Energy select a single site for the nation’s waste. In 1987 Congress amended the act to specify Yucca as the site. The act created a mechanism where the state could veto the selection but could be overridden by majority votes in both houses of Congress.
The Department of Energy triggered that process in January by officially recommending the Yucca site. In February, after a mandatory 30-day waiting period, Bush adopted the recommendation. Nevada’s governor, Kenny Guinn, a Republican, vetoed the measure, throwing it to Congress. In May, the House voted 306 to 117 in favor of the measure.
Several lawsuits have been filed to stop the designation. According to the provisions of the 1982 law, the lawsuits will proceed directly to appellate court, skipping a trial.
Democrats hope to use the issue to pick up support in traditionally Republican Western states in the 2002 and 2004 elections. With the passage, the Department of Energy is free to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for licenses to build and to operate the repository.