Jan 25 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Josh Voorhees Aiken Standard, S.C.

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint was one of six Republican senators who announced their support Thursday for a bill that would provide a destination for the high-level nuclear waste being stored at the Savannah River Site.

The bill, which was sponsored by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., would allow the planned high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., to receive a temporary license regulating its radiation standard for 300 years rather than 1 million years.

If passed, the bill could help break the ongoing stalemate that has threatened the project for the past decade. Under the proposed bill, after 300 years the repository would need another license setting restrictions for the remaining 1 million years. Current requirements call for the license to set restrictions for the full 1 million years.

"Yucca Mountain is the most studied piece of earth on this planet, but sadly, opposition is based on politics not on sound science. In 2002, Congress voted to open Yucca Mountain. It's time we move forward and remove the regulatory hurdles standing in the way," Sen. DeMint said Thursday.

High-level nuclear waste is being stored at a number of commercial and federal nuclear sites around the nation, including the Savannah River Site. A recently announced plan by the Department of Energy calls for the consolidation of the nation's surplus non-pit plutonium at SRS, where the waste would be converted to mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel to be burned in commercial reactors or encased in glass logs until it can be transported to Yucca Mountain.

The Yucca Mountain repository was originally scheduled to open in 1996 but is now expected to open in 2017 at the earliest, if at all. Congress voted to move ahead with the project in 2002; however, senators on both sides of the aisle have moved to block the plan, most notably Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

With only days before South Carolinians go to the polls to vote in the Democratic presidential primary, Inhofe took the opportunity to level criticism against the Democratic White House hopefuls for opposing a plan that would provide an exit strategy for the nuclear waste that is piling up at SRS.

"The Democratic presidential front-runners have relegated South Carolina to a status as a de facto nuclear waste repository," said Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "By pandering to Nevada voters and promising to kill Yucca Mountain, the Democrats have chosen to ignore the needs of South Carolina and 38 other states (that house nuclear waste), condemning them to permanently hosting nuclear waste without providing any plan for a national repository."

Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards all told Nevada voters this month they would block Yucca Mountain if elected.

Contact Josh Voorhees at jvoorhees@aikenstandard.com.