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Posted: 12:43 PM- WASHINGTON - Dumping the nation's nuclear waste in the Nevada desert could cost billions more and take even longer than previously anticipated.

But the plan to open Yucca by 2020 - three years later than previously estimated - hinges on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approving a license for the facility, for Congress to give its final nod to the arrangement and for enough money to be earmarked to the project.

"That is the best achievable date if everything does according to plan," Edward F. Sproat, director of the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, testified Tuesday before a House subcommittee.

Even then, he said, a second site may be needed to hold the rest of the nation's spent nuclear waste since the Yucca site is seeking a license to store some 77,000 tons of the radioactive leftovers.

Between 87 percent and 95 percent of that waste would travel through Utah en route to the southern Nevada facility, and Utah could again be looked at as a potential storage site for spent nuclear fuel.

Rep. Jim Matheson wants to take another route: leaving the waste where it was created.

The Utah Democrat pushed the Department of Energy official and others Tuesday about a bill he introduced in 2005 to have nuclear power plants hold onto their waste at reactor sites and for the DOE to take charge of them.

"The transportation of nuclear waste across the continent creates more problems than leaving it where it is," Matheson said, noting he does not oppose nuclear energy. "I just don't think moving the waste to Yucca Mountain really solves the problem. Even if we were to magically open Yucca Mountain today, we wouldn't have enough room for the waste we have."

Sproat, however, noted that on-site storage of the nuclear waste won't solve the problem either.

"It really becomes a question of for how long are you going to leave it there," Sproat said. "Eventually it's going to move and the longer you leave it there the more it's going to cost."

That concern was shared by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who argued Yucca Mountain makes the most sense because it is remote and "there's no one around."

"If we can't put it in the desert, under a mountain, we just can't put it anywhere in this country," Shimkus said.

Of course, the cost to open and operate Yucca has grown since the last time the DOE released an estimate of $58 billion in 2001. Sproat says the project, including the $9 billion already spent, and 100 years of operation could total $90 billion overall.

And it might need a twin to keep up with demand.

Sproat said a report on interim storage of nuclear waste as well as another on the need for a secondary repository are "imminent" but gave no firm date of when they would be released. The federal government once tried to select an area outside of Canyonlands National Park, and a consortium of energy companies recently tried to temporarily locate thousands of tons of nuclear waste on the Goshute Indian Reservation.

A few members of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Energy and Water complained that the time it has taken to approve, build and open Yucca Mountain has hindered - and will continue to hold back - any new nuclear power plants as the nation faces an energy crunch.

"A delay doesn't work for anyone's benefit," said Rep. Charles A. Gonzalez, D-Tex., who added that a lack of a clear storage plan is an "argument against improving our reactor capacity."

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