Mountain, while a long-term solution to dealing with nuclear waste is developed.

``The interim storage of waste (at reactors), the solidification of waste, is something we can do today. The NRC has said we can do it safely,'' Chu said.

But killing the Yucca Mountain project may not be possible by presidential directive.

The federal government is obligated by law to accept the used reactor fuel from 104 commercial power reactors, but as yet it has no place to put it. The spent fuel, growing at the rate of 2,000 tons a year, is being held in pools and aboveground concrete containers at reactor sites.



There appear to be no immediate plans by the Energy Department to withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application that is pending at the NRC because to do so could trigger lawsuits from the nuclear industry. The NRC has up to four years to consider the application.

A report to Congress in December by the Bush administration, which strongly supported the Yucca Mountain project, dismissed suggestions that reactor waste be kept at temporary storage sites by the government. That would require Congress to change the law that singled out Yucca for nuclear waste.