Washington ? President Bush approved a plan Friday to move highly radioactive waste spread among the nation’s nuclear power plants and bomb production facilities into a single storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Although the project still faces challenges through Congress, regulatory agencies and eventually the courts, the announcement culminates a lengthy, ongoing search for a final resting place for the huge quantities of nuclear waste accumulating since the dawn of the Atomic Age.

Mining engineer Gene Polorny walks out the front entrance tunnel at the Yucca Mountain Project in Nevada in this May 2000 file photo. Friday President Bush approved Yucca Mountain as the site for long-term disposal of thousands of tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

The plan calls for up to 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods to be buried within the dusty desert ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and adjacent to a former nuclear test ground. The nuclear waste will remain potentially lethal for hundreds of thousands of years.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the president chose to proceed with the Yucca Mountain plan because “one central site provides more protection for this material.”

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said “compelling national interests” demonstrated by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks made it even more important to consolidate the material in a remote location. However, the earliest the Yucca facility could be ready for shipments is 2010.

Opponents in Nevada and some environmental activists contend the movement of vast quantities of nuclear waste along the nation’s highways and railroads would leave the material more vulnerable to release by accident or terrorist attack.

The proposal has generated passionate opposition in Nevada during the 15 years since the government eliminated other sites from consideration.

Under a 1982 law, Nevada can veto the president’s decision, but Congress then has 90 legislative days to override the veto through a majority vote in the Senate and House. The storage facility also must meet safety requirements for licenses issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn pledged to veto the storage site, contending that the Energy Department has not proved that the facility would not contaminate groundwater.

He also cited a report last month by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, that concluded it is “premature” by several years to approve the project because of unresolved scientific and technical questions.

“I am outraged, as are the citizens of Nevada, that this decision would go forward with so many unanswered questions,” Guinn said.

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the powerful Democratic whip, is leading efforts to stop the nuclear depository in the Senate. But Nathan Naylor, a spokesman for Reid, conceded that the chances opponents would prevail are “40 percent at best.”

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., an ally of the nuclear industry, hailed the administration’s action as “a wise decision.”

“After two decades of study, we know this remote location beneath the Nevada desert is a safe, secure and viable site and should be completed without further delay,” Hastert said.

The central waste depository has long been a goal of the nuclear industry, which wants relief from the cost and safety concerns of storing fuel rods at nuclear power plants.