Republicans try to revive Yucca Mountain as nuclear-waste repository

WASHINGTON -- Yucca Mountain is still breathing.

It's been 24 long years since Congress designated the site in the southern Nevada desert as the best place to store the nation's nuclear waste.

While opponents have gained the upper hand in trying to block the project in recent years - in 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table" - a group of House Republicans is fighting back. They want to revive the site as part of a broader plan that calls for building 200 nuclear-power plants by 2030.

Under that plan, the nation would begin building nuclear plants on an unprecedented scale. Currently, the nation gets 20 percent of its electricity from 104 nuclear reactors.

There's one big problem: There's no place to put the radioactive waste.

The Republican legislation would take care of that. It would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete its review of the Yucca Mountain site "without political interference."

That would be difficult, with top Democrats trying hard to scrap the project.

In a speech to the Nevada legislature last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada boasted that Congress had "killed Yucca Mountain" because of fears that it would hurt the state's tourism industry.

And President Barack Obama, who campaigned against the proposed repository in 2008, included no money for Yucca Mountain in his 2012 budget.

Obama, though, has become a fan of nuclear power, reflecting how much things have changed since the "no-nukes" days of the 1970s. He regards nuclear power as an important part of his push for "clean energy."

And nuclear power is moving up on the agenda on Capitol Hill after the president talked it up in his State of the Union speech. Since then, Republicans have repeatedly cited nuclear power as an issue that could result in their cooperation with the White House.

The president promoted the issue again last month in his 2012 budget, which called for spending another $36 billion on loan guarantees to help build more nuclear plants. The guarantees could save power companies billions in financing costs.

However, the nuclear risk rising from Japan's Friday earthquake is likely to revive anti-nuclear-power sentiments in this country, and could tilt political momentum against the radioactive power source.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation" that he has been a "big supporter" of nuclear power and that the U.S. has "a good safety record." But he said the events in Japan require the U.S. to take care before proceeding.

"I think it calls on us here in the U.S. naturally not to stop building nuclear power plants but to put the brakes on right now until we understand the ramifications of what's happened in Japan," Lieberman said.

Still, 64 House Republicans have signed on to the bill that would triple the nation's nuclear capacity in 19 years. The legislation also promises to reignite an old battle by calling for energy exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The issue is of particular importance for a number of states with complexes that built nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War and are storing large amounts of radioactive waste, including:

-Washington, home to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the nation's largest atomic waste dump.

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