The United States Senate voted last night to make Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert the national dump for thousands of tons of nuclear waste – rejecting the state's frantic protests against the proposal.

The 60-to-39 vote approving the site 90 miles north-west of Las Vegas ended years of political debate over finding a suitable location for nuclear waste. President George Bush could yet decide not to sign the Bill but officials have indicated that he will sign.

Nevada's senators, who tried for months to rally their colleagues against the dump, argued that the issue was not simply that they did not want the waste in their state. They had hoped that concerns over thousands of waste shipments being made across the US would convince lawmakers to vote against the proposal, first aired two decades ago.

The state's Democratic senator, Harry Reid, criticised nuclear lobbyists and their "unending source of money for perpetuating the big lie" that the Nevada dump was urgently needed. He said the waste could be kept safely where it was, avoiding the transportation risks.

It seems that fear of failing to find a suitable site drove the Senate vote, with legislators concerned that nuclear waste could pile up indefinitely in their own states if a permanent location was not found.

Senate approval clears the way for the US Energy Department to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license the Yucca Mountain project, scheduled to open in 2010 and hold 77,000 tons of radioactive material.

About 100 nuclear power plants now produce more than 20 per cent of the nation's electricity. Spent fuel is stored at 131 sites in 39 states. Many of the storage tanks are nearly full.