A Bush administration bid to win approval for a national nuclear waste dump outside Las Vegas was challenged Wednesday by the state as too little and six years too late. State Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission not to register the license application or schedule it for hearings, calling it "legally deficient." Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman earlier declared that the application to build and operate the Yucca Mountain repository "will stand up to any challenges from anywhere."

The commission's primary job will be to determine whether the proposed design will protect public health, safety and the environment for as long as a million years.

Nevada's petition cites the law under which Congress set in motion a process to find a place to bury the nation's nuclear waste, and it calls the license application submitted by the Energy Department on Tuesday as overdue and "completely unauthorized."

"The Nuclear Waste Policy Act authorizes only one application for a high-level waste disposal facility, and that one application had to be filed with the NRC by October 2002," the state petition says.

The state argues that the facility the Energy Department told Congress in 2002 that it would build is "substantially different from the one now described."

"Moreover, parts of the (license application) are considered secret, and DOE takes the position that the NRC has no control over who may see the secret parts," the state's challenge said.

Commission spokesman David McIntyre said he could not immediately confirm the challenge had been received because of computer trouble after thunderstorms in the Washington area.

Yucca Mountain project spokesman Allen Benson declined to comment, saying the Energy Department had not seen the filing.

Commission Chairman Dale Klein has promised "an independent, rigorous and thorough examination ... based entirely on the technical merits."

Cortez Masto said the commission should refuse to docket the Yucca Mountain license application "until key components are available for review."

Docketing is the first step in what officials say could be a four-year review of the application to build and open the underground facility to bury 77,000 tons of spent, high-level commercial, industrial and military nuclear fuel.

An initial review by NRC officials is due to be completed within 120 days, followed by a 30-day period for potential challenges to be filed with a panel of NRC judges.

A 1982 law required the federal government to begin taking spent reactor fuel from commercial power plants and defense sites by 1998.

Yucca Mountain has been the only repository site under study since 1987. Planning has been beset by delays, funding shortfalls and questions about quality assurance since 2002. Meanwhile, utilities have sued the government for missing the 1998 deadline.

---

Associated Press writer Brendan Riley in Carson City contributed to this report.

---

On the Net:

Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov