Moving From Square One on Nuclear Waste The idea that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada is dead has not gone down well in Congress, where some Republicans are trying to allocate new money to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission so it can revive its evaluation of the site's suitability. But at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Thursday, some supporters of the civilian power industry said it was time to move on. "Even if Yucca Mountain were open today, we'd still need a second repository very quickly,"" said Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee and one of the Senate's foremost backers of nuclear power. "The stuff we have would fill up Yucca Mountain very quickly."" The Environment and Public Works" subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety heard testimony from two members of a blue-ribbon commission that was appointed after President Obama announced in 2010 that he was closing down the project to bury waste at Yucca, a volcanic structure in the desert about 100 miles from Las Vegas. The commission has called for starting fresh, with a "consent-based process,"" as opposed to having the federal government make a decision over the objection of a host state or local government. Senator Alexander appeared to embrace that idea, while not quite giving up on Yucca. "Whether one is for or against Yucca Mountain, we need to move ahead,"" he said. He and others spoke of establishing of "consolidation sites" where wastes could be moved for surface storage. There are 10 sites around the country where reactors formerly operated but were torn down, leaving the waste sitting in concrete and steel casks, experts said. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the ranking Republican member of the subcommittee, also seemed open to a fresh start, although he wondered whether a consent-based procedure would work. "Can this plan be a bridge to a long-term solution or will it bridge back to square one?" he said. The committee chairman, Tom Carper of Delaware, noted that Congress has been trying to find a disposal method for nuclear waste for decades. "Over 30 years later, we find ourselves at what is really a dead end,"" he said. The Yucca repository was chosen by Congress in the late 1980s, and the federal government then changed the environmental standards in such a way as to help the repository qualify as a safe storage site. Since then it has faced a variety of technical, political and legal problems. A variety of witnesses told the subcommittee that the likely route to settling on a repository site would involve local consent. Brent R. Scowcroft, a retired general who was co-chairman of the blue-ribbon commission, pointed out that this was how the United States found a spot for some nuclear bomb wastes at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., and added that Spain, Finland and Sweden had made progress this way. Senator Carper commented, "Somehow, we've learned how to get communities to compete for the siting of prisons in this country, but we haven't learned how to get communities to compete for our disposal sites."" Senator Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat, touched on another point - that Congress has been so deeply involved in trying to find a place to put nuclear waste that it may be reluctant to give up on its past efforts. "Nuclear waste policy has a poor history in Congress, as evidenced by our cutting short the site selection process and mandating Yucca,"" he said. He was referring to a decision in the late 1980s to instruct the Energy Department not to choose the best of three sites then under evaluation but simply to see if Yucca was suitable, largely based on Nevada's limited political clout at the time. A Nevada senator, Harry Reid, now leads the Senate's Democratic majority and has opposed a Yucca repository, and President Obama promised to have it shelved during his 2008 presidential campaign. The 1980s approach ultimately did not work, Senator Udall pointed out. "What goes around, comes around,"" he said.