Yucca Mountain News Clips
Monday, June 7, 2004
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
June 07, 2004
Political Notebook:
By Erin Neff
Political props
Nick Perrah may be 16 years away from his first vote, but the 2-year-old beamed with delight when he got to take part in a political event last week.
Nick got to play one of the "broken promises" in a chain of about 30 people including nine who haven't reached voting age. The chain was formed June 1 on the four-year anniversary of then-candidate George W. Bush's promise to base any decision on Yucca Mountain on "sound science, not politics."
Bush designated Yucca as the nation's nuclear waste repository in 2002 after President Clinton had sidestepped several attempts by Congress to do the same.
America Coming Together in Nevada, part of a liberal group striving to register voters in battleground states nationwide, formed the human chain with Bush policies or 2000 campaign promises it says the president has broken. Nick's Yucca Mountain placard joined ones highlighting prescription drugs, Medicare, the deficit, gasoline prices, veterans and seniors.
One of the biggest items of contention for some of those gathered to form the chain didn't even get placards. Namely, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
"I just feel the only promise he ever kept was going to war in Iraq," said Marcia Bollea, a nurse who does work with Catholic Charities. "It was a pre-emptive, unilateral strike."
Contact political reporter Erin Neff at 387-2906 or ENeff@reviewjournal.com.
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Rocky Mountain News
June 06, 2004
Speakout: Bullheaded about nuclear waste
By Joseph C. Strolin
The News' editorial of May 14, "Congress ducks duty on waste site," completely mischaracterized the state of Nevada's reasons for opposing the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. The state's opposition is emphatically not a NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard) response.
Nevada has said from Day One that the federal government had to demonstrate, through sound science, that the Yucca Mountain site could, in fact, isolate deadly radioactive waste from people and the environment for the tens of thousands of years necessary. The Department of Energy has not done that. Quite the contrary, DOE has wasted billions of dollars trying to make a bad site look acceptable.
DOE's own studies have shown that radioactive waste placed within this porous mountain will begin to leak into the environment in a very short period of time. To compensate, DOE has tried to come up with a whole array of Rube Goldberg fixes, including waste disposal containers that have to last for more than 10,000 years! Ironically, experts who study the material these containers are to be made of have found that it corrodes very rapidly in the Yucca Mountain environment and will probably fail in a few hundred years, maybe less.
It's almost criminal that DOE and the federal government have so single-mindedly and wrongheadedly focused on Yucca Mountain as the only solution to the problem of spent fuel disposal. It was apparent early on that the Nevada site was unsuitable. But rather than acknowledge that fact and put the country's resources into finding suitable alternative solutions, the feds stubbornly forged ahead for solely political and, yes, NIMBY reasons - no congressman or senator wants to reopen the issue for fear that his or her state could find itself as the next target.
Nevada has no dog in the fight over the appropriateness of nuclear power generation. If other states chose nuclear as an energy option, that is their decision to make. But let's not victimize countless generations of Nevadans by forcing a patently unsafe waste disposal site on the state for the sake of political expediency and because our federal government can't admit it made a grievous mistake.
Joseph C. Strolin is the administrator of the Office of the Governor's Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects planning division in Carson City, Nev.
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Washington Post
June 06, 2004
Critical Mass for Kerry
By George F. Will
John Kerry recently stopped in Las Vegas to say: "Rest assured, Nevada. If I'm president, Yucca Mountain will not be a depository." Back to mind comes Chic Hecht, a one-term Republican senator elected in 1982, who said he opposed using Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a nuclear waste "suppository."
Also to mind comes the French sovereign known as Henry of Navarre (1553-1610). More about him anon.
The problem of nuclear waste has been studied for 50 years. Twenty-two years ago Washington took responsibility for that waste -- there are 49,000 metric tons of it -- stored in 131 sites in the 39 states with nuclear power plants. Seventeen years ago Congress selected Nevada -- the federal government owns 86 percent of the state -- for the repository. Beginning in 2010, the waste is to be put 1,000 feet underground, on 1,000 feet of rock, in steel containers in 100 miles of storage tunnels within the mountain.
But in 1996 President Bill Clinton promised to veto any attempt to make Nevada even a temporary repository. That promise helped him beat Bob Dole there by just 4,730 votes, the smallest state margin that year.
In 2000 George W. Bush promised not to make Nevada a temporary repository, but said "sound science" would guide him regarding establishing a permanent repository there. He beat Al Gore 50-46 (301,575 to 279,978). A switch of 10,799 votes would have made Gore president.
In 2002 Bush approved Yucca Mountain as the permanent site. Congress said Nevada's governor could veto the selection but that his veto could be overridden by majorities in both houses. He vetoed it; Congress overrode him.
By this protracted dance of democracy the interests of an American majority -- 161 million live within 75 miles of today's storage sites -- prevailed, respectfully, over the objections of an intense minority, the approximately 2 million people who live in southern Nevada. Kerry's willingness to overturn this accommodation reflects a cold, and factually correct, calculation having nothing to do with the national interest: For the intense and compact Nevada minority, unlike for the diffuse American majority, this is a vote-determining issue.
Kerry's message to Nevadans -- essentially, "I feel your hypothetical pain" -- testifies to his readiness to do whatever it takes to win. As does his vow last week that, if elected, he would renegotiate the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).
He would try to force signatory nations (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and, soon, the Dominican Republic) to adopt labor and environmental standards more pleasing to him. The ostensible purpose of this would be to improve the lot of labor in those nations. But the primary purpose of the renegotiation would be to raise production costs in those countries, thereby making imports from them less competitive with U.S. products.
Time was, Kerry was a free-trader. Now he favors "fair trade," as defined by his labor allies. But he still is a critic of what he and like-minded people consider the Bush administration's obnoxious tendency to tell other nations how to behave.
The Wall Street Journal reports that "it would be unprecedented for a newly elected president to turn his back on a major trade deal negotiated by his predecessor." Unprecedented and, in Kerry's case, inconsistent.
When Kerry and kindred spirits criticize what they consider the Bush administration's hubris and bad diplomatic manners, they often cite its withdrawal from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change. It is understandable that they do not dwell on the fact that the Clinton administration refused to submit it for Senate ratification, or that the Senate voted 95 to 0 for a resolution against proceeding with the protocol as negotiated. The junior senator from Massachusetts said "no one in their right mind" would favor it as it is.
As far as Yucca Mountain and CAFTA are concerned, Kerry's comportment reflects toughness -- call it Navarrean toughness -- about subordinating all considerations of principle to the exigencies of winning power. Someone in the White House has naughtily said that Kerry "looks French." The scalding truth is that he wears Hermes neckties, which are French, and, worse still, he speaks French. But his real French connection is his spiritual kinship with Henry of Navarre.
Henry was raised a Protestant but converted to Catholicism -- twice -- for political reasons. His explanation still resonates with those politicians -- a large tribe -- who believe, as Kerry does, in doing whatever is necessary: "Paris is well worth a Mass."
georgewill@washpost.com
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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