A major battle in the ongoing war over storing 70 000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was won by President Bush and the US Department of Energy on 9 July when the Senate approved the administration’s plan to build the waste repository. The Senate vote of 60–39, combined with overwhelming approval of the Yucca plan in the House in May, overrides an earlier veto by Nevada’s governor and moves the project into the review and licensing phase at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
DOE plans to deliver its licensing application to the NRC in December 2004, and the regulatory agency is then expected to take several years to review the request, an NRC spokesman said. The earliest that radioactive waste could actually be moved to the mountain is 2010.
Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) both worked for months to derail...
