Key bipartisan senators are finding potential legislative solutions during a divisive election year to begin the lengthy process of deciding how to store tens of thousands of tons of hot, radioactive waste piling up across the country.

Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said an energy and water appropriations bill that her subpanel approved yesterday would allow Energy Secretary Steven Chu to begin building temporary storage sites for nuclear waste in willing host communities (Greenwire, Feb. 24).

"Knowing that an election year is a very hard time to pass a big bill, the chances of doing so are slim to none," Feinstein told reporters after yesterday's markup. "The chance of putting something small in an appropriation bill could get it started, so that's what we did."

The appropriations language would serve as a precursor to more comprehensive legislation that Feinstein and other senators plan to introduce to provide a permanent solution for storing waste. That "big bill" would be based on recommendations that President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission issued earlier this year, she said (Greenwire, Jan. 26).

Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is currently drafting that bill, which he plans to release with the support of Feinstein, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

In January, Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission called for the creation of a congressionally chartered corporation to site, license, build and operate facilities for storing and disposing of spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste. The panel also called for the government to use a consent-based approach to site one or more permanent geologic disposal facilities and one or more consolidated storage facilities.

Bingaman said during an interview yesterday that the legislation is not yet complete and there is no timeline for its release. Even so, Feinstein said Chu and the co-chairs of the Blue Ribbon Commission pledged during a meeting in December to support the effort.

The Senate appropriations measure avoids the broader controversy surrounding the abandoned nuclear waste dump under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, Alexander told reporters yesterday.

The Obama administration has pulled away from the project financially and politically, saying the site is "unworkable," although Republicans argue it is legally required to be built.

"Yucca is irrelevant to this decision; Yucca is a long-term site," Alexander said. "This is for temporary consolidation of the used fuel, so whether we have Yucca or whether we don't have Yucca, we still need consolidation sites."

Chu would be able to build the temporary sites with the approval of Congress, Alexander said.

"Before they can implement the site, that site will have to be approved by the entire Congress, but we have the support of senior members of the authorizing and appropriations committee," Alexander said. "We've been stymied for two decades, and this is really the first significant step since the last 20 years."

Alexander said Bingaman's bill will likely be introduced in the coming weeks, and he hopes the appropriations legislation reaches the Senate floor this summer and is enacted this year.

Senate appropriators yesterday left out money to fund the Yucca Mountain project, unlike a competing measure moving through the House that includes $25 million for the project. That decision may have been in response to increasing pressure in the Senate to defund the project.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is strongly opposed to the dump, and Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada yesterday sent a letter to Senate and House appropriators, urging them to defund the Yucca project and find alternatives.

"Nevadans have a right to be safe in their own backyards, and given the historically politicized nature of this project, I don't trust the federal government to appropriately manage Yucca Mountain," Heller wrote.