One of the issues the new U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, may find on his plate almost immediately is the question of what to do with nuclear waste. Just last week, Daschle went on record against the underground nuclear waste repository under construction for more than a decade at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Critics say there are questions about the site's safety and reliability.
But on Wednesday, the day Daschle became the Senate's most powerful member, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences has released a report urging speedy, international action on nuclear waste disposal, including underground storage. The problem, they say, is that many people view nuclear waste management to be a purely technical issue. It's a message the scientists say they hear all the time. The report asserts that current methods of nuclear waste disposal are safe and that now is the time to move ahead. For example, the United States has slightly more than 100 nuclear power plants.