WASHINGTON — Pending nuclear-waste legislation in the U.S. Senate has the Western Governors' Association concerned that it would weaken the states' role in regulating shipments of used commercial nuclear fuel or any radioactive material.
The Energy Department has proposed a bill to Congress that addresses the government's plan to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. The measure contains provisions that would change federal rules on everything from the legal limit of waste the mountain can hold to how it gets there.
If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows the department to move forward with its plan to build a nuclear-waste storage site at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, potential train or truck shipment routes could go through Salt Lake City.
"We urge you not to enact any legislation that diminishes the states' role in ensuring safe transportation of these materials at the very time that the amount of shipments would dramatically increase," wrote WGA Chairman and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. "It proposes, in fact, an unwarranted change from the way nearly two decades of non-classified DOE shipping campaigns have been planned for and conducted."
Napolitano sent the letter to the bill's sponsor, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who heads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and the committee's top Democrat, Jeff Bingaman, also of New Mexico, as well as all the committee members and all senators from Western states.
"We are concerned that the portions of the bill related to transportation could seriously undermine shipment safety and public confidence, key to successful repository operation," Napolitano wrote.
When it released the bill on April 5, the Energy Department highlighted that it would withdraw public lands from the area around the mountain, change how Congress can allocate money to it and eliminate the 77,000-ton cap on the waste to be stored there.
But Napolitano wrote that the Western governors take issue with other provisions that would exempt Yucca Mountain shipments from the Hazardous Materials Transportation Authorization Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, federal laws designed to protect public health and safety.
"Bypassing these proven and widely accepted federal frameworks for transportation safety, particularly at the same time that significant shipment increases of these materials would heighten public concern, is inappropriate," she wrote.
The bill, if approved, would also allow the Energy and Transportation secretaries to pre-empt any state, tribal or local law or regulation, even those permitted under the current regulatory framework for transporting the waste.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman toured the tunnel at Yucca Mountain for this first time Thursday and talked about the bill.
"The legislation will allow us to provide stability, provide clarity, as well as predictability to the Yucca Mountain project," he said, "and will help lay a solid foundation for America's future energy security."
Contributing: The Associated Press
E-mail: suzanne@desnews.com