LAS VEGAS (AP) -- House budget leaders on Friday scrapped funding for an Energy Department plan to build a temporary nuclear waste storage site in Nevada by 2007, three years before the Yucca Mountain repository could open.
Meanwhile, the full House approved a broader spending bill, including a record $765 million in Yucca Mountain project spending next year.
That sets up a budget battle with the Senate, where the Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved a $425 million Yucca budget that did not contain the provision for the temporary storage site.
A full Senate vote could come next week in Washington, D.C.
The provision for a $4 million Department of Energy study of an interim, aboveground waste site came in a $27.1 billion House energy and water spending bill that emerged from committee this month.
It was endorsed by pro-Yucca lawmakers seeking to help the Energy Department get the repository open by 2010.
Nevada Reps. Jon Porter and Jim Gibbons, both Republicans, got the provision cut from a measure to be considered by a House and Senate conference committee.
Under the planned revision, the $4 million would be used instead to bolster security of nuclear waste storage containers at nuclear plants.
Pro-Yucca lawmakers said Friday that approving Yucca was a matter of national security because it would centralize the nation's most radioactive waste, now piling up at 103 reactors nationwide, in one underground repository.
A temporary storage site would let nuclear power plant operators across the country begin shipping their waste to Nevada before a permanent repository can accept it.
