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WASHINGTON - Congressional delegations from Utah and Nevada united Wednesday to introduce legislation aimed at preventing shipments of high-level nuclear waste to either state and instead seeking to store the material at the reactors where it was produced.

The prospect of on-site storage could significantly reduce the attractiveness of a proposed temporary storage site on Utah's Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation.

The bill's sponsor, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says it would relieve energy companies of the burden of managing the waste, reduce the risk associated with shipping nuclear material across the country, and would buy time to develop workable alternatives to a proposed permanent waste facility beneath Yucca Mountain, Nev., which is badly behind schedule.

"The Yucca Mountain project is never going to happen," Reid said in a statement. "Storing nuclear wastes on-site is the safest, most reasonable and most effective way of allowing nuclear power companies to continue operating while keeping the health and safety of Americans as a top priority."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said the steel casks that Reid's plan envisions containing the waste - like those that would be used to hold 44,000 tons of spent fuel at the proposed facility in Utah - can safely store the radioactive material for a century.

The casks already are used at 33 nuclear power sites across the country.

However, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the largest industry organization, was critical Wednesday of Reid's proposal, saying it doesn't solve the larger problem. The U.S. Energy Department also said the Reid proposal adds new costs without providing a permanent solution to nuclear waste disposal.

Utah Sens. Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch joined Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., in introducing the Senate bill. Utah Rep. Jim Matheson introduced a similar bill in the House, co-sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop and Nevada's three House members.

Hatch said it was an imminent nuclear waste disposal problem that "led to the lame-brained Skull Valley plan in the first place. This bill is a way to take the pressure off the need for Skull Valley."

Hatch's support is notable, since he maintains that the Bush administration, not Reid, holds the key to defeating the Utah plan promoted by a consortium of nuclear power companies. His staff said Hatch has worked with Reid on the bill and supports it, but will not reject Yucca Mountain as Bennett publicly did in September.

"My support for it does not change my support for Yucca Mountain, although it is clear that I am pursuing other reasonable or acceptable approaches to solving the disposal problem," Hatch said. "Rather, it shows that I stand with the senators from Nevada and Utah in signaling that the government must develop a nuclear waste disposal policy, the sooner the better."

Under Reid's plan, the Energy Department would be legally responsible for the casks of waste, relieving the utilities of the liability and allowing the nuclear plants to continue operating.

"I've always said that storage on site is the right scientific answer, but differing state laws have made it impossible. The Reid legislation resolves this problem, and buys us time to craft a sensible national policy on nuclear energy," Bennett said.

Matheson said the bill seeks to show nuclear companies that "you don't need to be moving this away, and we're setting it up in a way that discourages moving it off site."

"This hopefully will put a roadblock in place to dumping this waste on the West, one would hope, in the intervening decades," Matheson said.

But a spokesman for the Energy Department said Reid's plan would not eliminate the need for Yucca Mountain.

"It does add substantial additional costs, but it does not in any way resolve the permanent disposal issue, which Yucca Mountain is designed to do," said DOE spokesman Craig Stevens.

Stevens said the department would have to study whether on-site storage could be part of a broader storage plan.

The nuclear industry will not support Reid's plan, said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

"Taking title without physically removing used fuel from plant sites does not demonstrate the progress in used fuel management that our country should, nor does it meet the government's obligation to develop a geological repository at Yucca Mountain," Kerekes said.

Reid proposalThe legislation introduced Wednesday would amend the Nuclear Waste

Policy Act to do the following:

l The act would require utilities to transfer nuclear fuel from cooling pools into storage casks within six years.

l It would require the Energy Department to take control of all spent fuel stored on site in dry casks within 30 days.

l Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations would govern on-site storage sites and casks.

l The Nuclear Waste Fund, created through a fee paid by nuclear reactor operators, would compensate utilities for transfer, storage and security costs.