Yucca Mountain

BURLINGAME, Calif. -- David H. LeRoy, the Bush administration's chief nuclear waste negotiator, is trying to sell Indian leaders on a controversial deal to set aside tribal lands for federal storage of spent radioactive fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants.He held out to financially strapped tribes the prospect of more federal money for public works improvements, health care, education and other benefits for those willing to help the government solve the critical problem of disposing of 20,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fission rods from 110 plants.

LUSBY -- Each looks like an army's ultimate pillbox or a grossly overbuilt garage, surrounded by a double row of high fencing at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant. The exterior walls, made of concrete and steel, are 3 feet thick. So are the roofs. The doors weigh 6 tons.If all goes well, the new, shedlike buildings will sometime later this year become a storage place for used reactor fuel, by far the plant's most intensely radioactive wastes. Everything at the new depot is designed to endure indefinite amounts of radiation and time, because a truly permanent storage place does not yet exist.

The House takes up campaign finance measures and the Senate debates tobacco legislation. Here is how members of Maryland's delegation on Capitol Hill were recorded on important roll-call votes last week:Y: Yes N: No X: Not votingHouse: ReligionVoting 224 for and 203 against, the House failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to approve a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to voluntarily express religious beliefs on public property....

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Opening a campaign swing through battleground states of the desert Southwest, President Bush aggressively defended his Iraq policy yesterday against John Kerry's attacks. "I know what I'm doing when it comes to winning this war," Bush told cheering supporters in Albuquerque, N.M. Then, with a shake of his head, he added, in an apparent swipe at his Democratic opponent, "And I'm not going to be sending mixed signals." Spotlight on war Iraq has once again assumed a central place in the presidential contest, with Bush and Kerry debating the war long-distance as they compete for votes in the toss-up states of New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

LOOKING FORWARD MONDAY Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be hunting for ways to end the yearlong impasse with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program as she visits four nations in East Asia. China may be the most difficult stop for Rice, given growing disagreements between the two countries on issues including North Korea. Rice is also visiting Thailand, Japan and South Korea. TUESDAY Gov. Janet Napolitano hosts a summit in Flagstaff, Ariz., to devise plans for enforcement of federal immigration laws in Arizona, the busiest illicit entry point on the nation's porous southern border.

COVERT, Mich. -- For the foreseeable future, more than 70 communities near nuclear generating plants will become repositories for spent nuclear fuel, the most radioactive of all atomic wastes, without any public hearings or environmental studies of the sites.Utilities have no choice but to build de facto permanent repositories near their plants, because after decades of searching for a centralized nuclear waste site, the United States is still at least 15 years away from a solution and has found nowhere else to store the roughly 30,000 tons that have already accumulated.

Some things I've been wondering about: Do nervous Mitt Romney supporters remember then-Sen. Hillary Clinton thumping then-Sen. Barack Obama in three major primary states just prior to Obama declaring victory in the 2008 Democratic primaries? Does the White House fully understand the hole it has dug itself by stepping on the third rail of abortion politics - the "conscience clause" for religious institutions? How can self-proclaimed Zionists support the president's re-election now that a nearly nuclear Iran has Israel in its anti-Semitic crosshairs?

With the recent settlement between the state of Maryland and Constellation Energy Group, the power company is once again championing Calvert Cliffs as the site of a new nuclear power plant. This is not a cause for celebration. On July 13, Constellation submitted the first new application to build a nuclear power plant in the U.S. since Three Mile Island. But the company threatened to go elsewhere if Maryland lawmakers re-established state regulatory control on new power plants.

WASHINGTON -- If you thought the computer chip and the laser were pretty amazing, hold on to your hat. The next decade is going to provide even more wonders.What is the greatest environmental hazard we face? Arguably, it is nuclear waste. We currently inter the radioactive stuff in carefully designed graves at the site of existing commercial and military reactors.But there is a plan for a permanent disposal site at Yucca Mountain. The facility, which will not be completed until early in the next century, is to be equipped with underground railroads and robot-operated cars to ensure that humans do not come into contact with waste materials.