YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. — U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman made his first visit Thursday to the Nevada desert site picked for the nation's nuclear waste dump, pledging to fix problems and press ahead with opening an expanded repository.
"I recognize that there have been problems in the past," Bodman said as he emerged wearing a white hard hat from a five-mile tunnel drilled into the ancient volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "But we've been working very hard collectively to change that."
Bodman said he hoped Congress would speed legislation the Energy Department proposed last week that would remove hurdles to licensing, building and operating the dump.
"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."
The bill, sponsored in the Senate by Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., faces a fight from Nevada's congressional delegation including Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate minority leader.
The measure would raise the amount of highly radioactive waste that could be entombed at the site from 77,000 tons to 132,000 tons, and it would tap a special nuclear waste fund, reducing its exposure to congressional budget battles. Some $9 billion has been spent so far on the $58 billion project.
Reid, traveling Thursday in Nevada, called the bill "an admission of failure."
"This bill will not pass the Senate, and I believe that Yucca Mountain will never open," Reid said.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., accused Bodman of downplaying the dangers of shipping more nuclear material, and the head of a Las Vegas-based anti-Yucca Mountain advocacy group said Bodman should have met with critics of the project.
"If you were responsible for such a far-reaching bill with so many implications and impacts on the people of a U.S. state, you should have the obligation or at least the courtesy to meet with the public," said Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nuclear Waste Task Force.
Bodman said he heard all sides of the issue during his two-day trip, which included a meeting with editors of the state's largest newspaper in Las Vegas and a tour of the vast Nevada Test Site — where an Energy Department agency plans a huge non-nuclear explosion June 2.
Bodman, who became energy secretary in February 2002, said opening Yucca Mountain would reduce the nation's dependence on coal, oil and natural gas by encouraging nuclear power plant construction. No commercial reactors have been built in the U.S. since 1973. The Energy Department hopes the dump will solve the decades-old problem of how to dispose of nuclear waste piling up at commercial, industrial and military sites in 39 states.
Bodman, who taught chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1960s, said he was impressed by the "quantity" and "quality" of scientific work at the site. But he stopped short of endorsing its scientific findings, and promised that the repository won't open if it can't be made safe.