WASHINGTON - Western governors say shipping nuclear waste could be riskier under a Bush administration proposal to keep states from inspecting or rerouting waste bound for Yucca Mountain, Nev.
    The Yucca Mountain bill, written by the Energy Department and introduced last week by Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., exempts Yucca shipments from federal hazardous materials regulations and any state regulation.
    The transportation provisions "could seriously undermine shipment safety and public confidence," Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano wrote Thursday in a letter on behalf of the Western Governors Association.
   According to an Energy Department analysis, between 8 million and 11 million people nationwide live within a half-mile of the potential truck or rail routes to Yucca Mountain. The waste would travel through as many as 45 states and 700 counties. Yucca Mountain's capacity is now capped at 77,000 tons of spent fuel, although the new Bush administration proposal would raise the limit to 120,000 tons, potentially increasing the amount of traffic going through Utah on its way to the site.
    Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has expressed concern about the waste shipments, most of which would cross Utah on their way to Nevada, and supports leaving the waste at the reactors that produced it.
   "It's important to take into account the viewpoints of affected states on issues involving nuclear waste because nuclear waste is an issue that affects people very locally," said Huntsman's spokesman, Mike Lee. "There is an understandable reluctance on the part of states like ours to have any [of the] limited authority we now have further eroded."
    Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said the goal of the provision is to ensure that there is "consistent treatment" for DOE shipments, so standards don't change when a shipment crosses from one jurisdiction to the next.
    "We believe what we're going to do will either meet or exceed the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] or Department of Transportation requirements. What we're going to do is better than the minimum and is a safe and responsible method of transportation," Stevens said. "In no way does it diminish our commitment to trying to work with states and tribes moving forward."
   Oregon Gov. Theodore Kulongoski wrote a separate letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman this week, opposing the pre-emption of state regulations, praising DOE's track record of cooperation with the states, and urging that the provisions be stripped from the bill.
   Although it is more than a decade behind schedule, the Energy Department hopes to open a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain by 2015. If it becomes a reality, Utah could see more than 10,000 rail shipments and nearly 2,400 truck shipments of spent nuclear fuel rolling through the state.
   Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant for Nevada's anti-Yucca campaign, said he expects the transit provisions in the Energy Department bill to be constroversial on two fronts.
   "First they exempt DOE from safety and counterterrorism regulations that most people both in the industry and the state government level think are working," he said. "Secondly they go so far in exempting DOE from these regulations that it raises doubts in my mind that the bill can be passed with those provisions in there."
   Specifically, Napolitano's letter expresses concern that the Bush administration's proposal would exempt shipments to Yucca Mountain from federal hazardous materials statutes, and would pre-empt state, tribal and local laws that allow state inspections of shipments or rerouting of shipments away from high-risk areas.
   It is also contrary to a recent report by the National Academies of Science that said spent fuel could be shipped safely under "strict adherence to existing regulations."
   "We urge you not to enact any legislation that diminishes states' role in ensuring safe transportation of these materials at the very time that the amount of shipments would dramatically increase," Napolitano wrote.
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