WASHINGTON - A leading Senate player on nuclear waste introduced legislation Wednesday that could accelerate by five years or more the removal of spent fuel rods accumulating at commercial power plants.

If enacted, the bill would slice more than five years off the Energy Department's most optimistic schedule for beginning to receive high-level nuclear waste at its Nevada repository in 2017 by authorizing above-ground temporary storage while a permanent underground facility is readied.

The legislation by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also would apply to accumulated waste at federal nuclear weapons facilities such as the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Waste from those plants could begin moving to the Nevada site as early as 2010 under the Domenici bill.

"This bill will remove legal barriers that will allow DOE to meet its obligation to accept and store spent nuclear fuel as soon as possible," Domenici said in introducing the bill that also would permanently declare a 147,000-acre site for the Nevada waste complex.

The legislation is intended to add new options for waste building up at plants like those at Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo, Calif., where plant owner Pacific Gas and Electric is building thick concrete pads to bolt down casks to hold the waste until a federal repository is opened.

"We have 20 years of used fuel here," said plant spokesman Jeff Lewis. "That is why we need to get the dry cask facility going."

But critics have charged that dry storage there creates a target for terrorists, and recently the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to examine that threat.

The Domenici bill adds a new element to the evolving nuclear waste debate by requiring the commission to act quickly to approve above-ground storage at the Nevada site where the permanent underground repository is planned. Before, above-ground temporary storage there has not been on the table.

The bill, described by staff aides Wednesday as a "discussion draft" pending a larger debate in Congress next year, represents just one of the options under consideration on Capitol Hill.

Another would authorize above-ground storage sites for the casks in states with nuclear plants. These sites could be at an existing plant with enough property to accommodate waste from other in-state plants, or at central collection points with high security.

In addition, the Energy Department is studying ways of reprocessing the waste to not only reduce the volume headed for permanent storage but to renew fuel supplies for the nation's 104 commercial reactors.

Any plan involving waste storage in Nevada faces a daunting challenge. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, is flatly opposed to having it in his state and has vowed that a repository there will never open.

But Congress overrode his opposition in 2002 when it revised the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to build the repository at Yucca Mountain. Karen Billups, deputy chief counsel to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that Domenici heads, told reporters Wednesday that it only makes sense to proceed with temporary storage there as well.

"We think we can go ahead and make decisions," she said. "The best place for storage is Nevada."

At hearings earlier this month, the head of the Energy Department's nuclear waste office, Edward F. Sprout III, said the agency plans to submit to the NRC its application for a Yucca Mountain license by June 30, 2008.

The Domenici bill requires that the agency simultaneously file an application for above-ground storage, and it gives the NRC only 18 months to approve it. The site could begin accepting defense waste as soon as the NRC approves the permit. An environmental impact statement would be required.

Acceptance of civilian reactor waste would be delayed until the NRC issues permits for the repository, now projected by the Energy Department for mid-2011. But that is well ahead of the 2017 projected opening of the repository, the earliest under current law for civilian waste to begin arriving.

Even if all goes according to plan, as it almost never does in the nuclear waste controversy, it will take decades for all the waste in storage at reactor sites to make its way either to reprocessing or to Yucca Mountain. The bill gives priority to waste that the Energy Department determines is unsuitable for reprocessing or for which technology is not yet available.

There is an estimated 54,000 metric tons of nuclear waste at the reactor sites, and another 2,000 tons are produced annually. Billups said the Nevada site is expected to be able to handle only about 3,000 tons of arriving waste a year, which means that it could be mid-century until the backlog is erased.

Still, Frank Bowman, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, hailed the legislation, saying in a statement that it would help achieve the opening of Yucca Mountain and "allow for more timely movement of defense waste and civilian used fuel."