That leaves unclear whether the mountain's suitability as a waste repository will ever be determined.
Congressional approval would not mean that a repository will definitely be built.
The repository will not be open or visible to the public.
"To have their records in a repository will make a world of difference from a historical ground-up perspective".
The repository will be controlled by the city's medical examiner and sealed off from everyone but family members.
But unless the Senate also votes to override Nevada by late this month, the designation of Yucca as the candidate repository will expire.
Our hope is that opponents of the repository will wait for a verdict from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before prejudging the site as unacceptable.
Dr. Wendy Chung, a clinical geneticist at Children's Hospital of New York and a foundation board member, hopes the repository will give researchers more genetic material to analyze.
The government now predicts that a waste repository will open by 2020 at the earliest, and clearing the backlog could take many decades.
Establishing a permanent repository will take many years, it noted, and spent fuel is meanwhile sitting at nine sites where nuclear reactors no longer operate.
The Energy Department will have to lay out "not just their argument, but what supports their argument" about why the repository will contain the wastes successfully for 10,000 years, he said.
