Keeping a long-standing promise, President Clinton yesterday vetoed a bill that would have required the Department of Energy to move nuclear waste from commercial reactors around the country to a central site in Nevada before completion of a planned permanent waste repository in the state. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to decide as early as 2006 whether the Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada should be licensed; the site is proposed for opening in 2010. The bill would have directed the DOE to begin shipping nuclear waste from 31 states to the site by 2007. Clinton criticized the bill for limiting the EPA’s ability to issue radiation standards for the repository. Attempts to override the veto are expected to be unsuccessful.
