"Our aim is to continue moving forward and we are hopeful that the licensing process can be completed by the end of this year or early next year," said Sue Martin, spokeswoman for the $3.1 billion Utah project.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board held month-long hearings on the plan in Salt Lake City in April and is expected to make a recommendation to the NRC by the end of the year.

The Utah project, led by utility holding company Xcel Energy of Minneapolis, would store the waste fuel for up to 20 years, with a 20-year extension, on 820 leased acres of reservation land belonging to the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians.

The reservation is about 45 miles (72 km) southwest of Salt Lake City.

Unlike Yucca Mountain, where the waste would be interred deep inside a mountain 90 miles (150 km) northwest of Las Vegas, used fuel rods in the Utah project would be packed in 175-tonne steel and concrete canisters called dry casks and stored outside.

The containers would be shipped by rail to Utah to sit on thick, above-ground concrete pads until Yucca Mountain is ready.

10,000 YEAR STORAGE

The Senate vote yesterday effectively clears the way for the U.S. Department of Energy to apply to the NRC to license the $58 billion Yucca Mountain project.

The facility, which still faces legal challenges, is scheduled to open in 2010 and hold 70,000 tonnes of waste fuel that the Environmental Protection Agency says must be isolated for 10,000 years.

Nuclear power plant operators, which generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity, face shrinking waste storage space at their reactors.

About 44,000 tonnes of used fuel rods now are stored in fuel pools and casks in the United States - enough to cover a football field 15 feet (4.6 meters) deep - and the nation's 103 reactors produce another 2,000 tonnes each year.

Xcel Energy is leading the Utah project because it will run out of storage room at its twin-reactor Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota by 2007, said Scott Wilensky, director of state government affairs for the utility.

Other Utah project members are American Electric Power , Edison International , the Southern Nuclear unit of Southern Co. , FirstEnergy , Entergy , FPL Group's Florida Power & Light and privately held Genoa Fuel Tech.