Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, August 12, 2004
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Las Vegas SUN
August 12, 2004
Presidential appearance draws protesters outside Vegas union hall
By Christina Almeida
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Several hundred protesters demonstrated Thursday outside a southern Nevada carpenters' union hall where President Bush spoke about jobs, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and the war on terror.
Chanting "No More Bush" and "Bush Lied," some in the crowd said they were upset about Bush administration union policies and the president's support for a planned national nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Some criticized the symbolism of his appearance at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners training center, in an industrial park near McCarran International Airport.
"He's totally against organizing," said Patrick Rush, 49, of Las Vegas, an organizer for the State of Nevada Employees Association and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Rush said he wanted to tell Bush that Nevada residents don't want nuclear waste, and said it didn't matter if Bush addressed the Yucca Mountain issue during his speech.
"He goes against his promises all the time," Rush said.
The union official's comments echoed those of Democratic rival John Kerry during speeches he gave Tuesday and Wednesday in the Las Vegas area.
Kerry said Bush broke a promise from his 2000 campaign to ensure science, not politics, would decide whether Yucca Mountain would become the nation's nuclear waste repository. When Bush and Congress approved the site in 2002, many scientific studies remained unfinished.
The Bush campaign has accused Kerry of switching sides on the Yucca issue - pointing to the Massachusetts senator's votes for some measures affecting Yucca Mountain measures. In simple yes-or-no votes, however, Kerry has voted against the project.
"I listened to the people that know the facts and know the science and I made a decision," Bush said. "My opponent wants to turn the issue into a political poker chip."
The protesters were kept well away from the union training center that Bush said illustrated successful worker training policies.
"We're interested in finding things that work and heralding them," the president said to applause from an invited audience. "There are a lot of people willing to work, but the nature of jobs is changing. They need help and education to fulfill the new jobs of the 21st Century."
Las Vegas police said the 250 to 300 demonstrators remained peaceful under the watchful eye of about 60 officers. Some in the crowd were overcome by heat, but no serious injuries were reported.
The protest was organized by the Democratic party in Nevada, and included some union members upset about Bush administration policies on overtime for workers and union practices.
"I want to support getting Bush out of the White House. He has done more harm in four years than anybody else in history," said protester Julia Winkler, 44, an elementary school teacher from Las Vegas.
Her husband, David Winkler, 57, also a teacher, blamed Bush for the USA Patriot Act.
"He is infringing on our rights under a supposed banner of freedom," he said.
After the speech, the president was scheduled to fly to Santa Monica, Calif., for a Republican party fundraiser.
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USA Today
August 12, 2004
Bush defends decision to send nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain
LAS VEGAS (AP) — President Bush on Thursday defended his decision to use Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump, an unpopular move in a swing state that he won four years ago.
"I said I would make a decision based upon science, not politics. I said I would listen to the scientists, those involved with determining whether or not this project could move forward in a safe manner and that's exactly what I did," Bush told supporters in this city 90 miles southeast of the proposed waste site.
Bush accused Democratic Sen. John Kerry of pandering to Nevada voters by playing both sides of the issue, part of a broader effort to cast the Massachusetts senator as someone who bends to the political winds.
"He says he's strongly against Yucca here in Nevada, but he voted for it several times," Bush claimed.
That is not exactly true.
Each time Kerry has faced the simple choice of voting whether or not to send waste to Yucca Mountain, he has voted against it. But he has voted for some measures that had provisions to allow nuclear dumps there. Some 16 years ago, Kerry voted for an overall budget bill that included a provision favoring putting the nuclear waste in Nevada.
Kerry visited Las Vegas earlier this week, and said that Bush broke a campaign promise to ensure science and not politics determined his decision whether to ship waste to Yucca Mountain.
Dozens of scientific studies remain incomplete and a recent federal appeals court ruling raised questions about whether the waste repository will be built, or at least meet its target of 2010 to begin operation.
Bush said he was pleased to "allow this process to be appealed to the courts and to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
"I will stand by the decision of the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Bush said.
Bush's visit here was his second in two months. Though Nevada has only five electoral votes — a tiny slice of the 270 needed to win the presidency — it has become a hotly contested prize in an election that is so close.
A poll of likely Nevada voters in late July showed the race essentially tied.
From Nevada, Bush was jetting to Santa Monica, Calif. for a Republican National Committee fund raiser, his 12th visit to California. He has not been there in five months, a measure of the pessimism in Bush's camp about winning California's 55 electoral votes.
Recent polls show Kerry holds a lead of about 11 percentage points, despite Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory in last year's gubernatorial recall election. Schwarzenegger was introducing Laura Bush at Thursday night's fund raiser.
Kerry also campaigned in Southern California on Thursday, saying Bush's tax cuts failed to spur job creation.
Bush defended the tax cuts in his speech at a Las Vegas union hall, which the Bush campaign packed with hundreds of Republican supporters.
"All I ask is to be careful about all of this talk about taxing the rich," Bush said. "The so-called rich hire accountants and lawyers to maybe not pay as much. And therefore in order to meet all of these promises, guess who ends up getting stuck with the bill? The working people."
It was Bush's latest attempt to court a friendly labor union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. Most labor unions lean strongly Democratic.
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The Whitehouse
August 12, 2004
Press Gaggle by Scott McClellan
Aboard Air Force One
En Route Las Vegas, Nevada
President´s Schedule
- Yucca Mountain
- Nuclear Waste Facility
- Iraq/Najaf
- Senator Kerry/Campaign
9:55 A.M. PDT
MR. McCLELLAN: This morning the President spoke with some of the senior staff back in Washington and received a briefing on the storms -- Tropical Storm Bonnie and Hurricane Charley. The President wanted to make sure that all the necessary and appropriate federal resources are being deployed and put in place. And then following that, he had his usual briefings.
And upon arrival in Vegas, the Freedom Corps greeter is Mike Peschl, who has been an active volunteer with Habitat for Humanity of Las Vegas since 1996. Then following that, the President will go to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America International Training Facility and participate in a tour. You all would be there to cover that as the pool. I think there are two different parts of the training facility that he will be touring today. And then he will make remarks to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America International Training Facility, or people that are there at the International Training Facility.
Then we leave Las Vegas and go to Los Angeles. The Freedom Corps greeter there will be Lynn Brennan. And for the past year, Lynn has volunteered as a producer and host of Senior Living, a cable television program that airs throughout Southern California and focuses on affirmative aging.
Then the President will participate in a -- President and Mrs. Bush will participate in an interview with "Larry King Live," which will air tonight on, which station, Suzanne?
Q CNN.
Q Is that pool coverage?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, but you can -- it will be open press tonight, though, on TV. Then following that, the President makes remarks tonight at a Victory 2004 dinner in Santa Monica. If there are any other stops along the way, we will keep you posted.
Q Do you have an update to the schedule, sir?
MR. McCLELLAN: I do have an update to the schedule. Thank you for reminding me. On Monday, August 16th, in addition to the previously announced remarks in Cincinnati, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, the President will also make remarks at a Traverse City, Michigan rally. And that's all I've got.
Q Back home that night?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I believe we're back in D.C.
MR. DECKARD: Monday night? Yes.
MR. McCLELLAN: Monday night, yes.
Q Can you preview the remarks today, both what he's going to say to the Joiners -- the overarching remarks, and particularly Yucca Mountain?
MR. McCLELLAN: Obviously, he'll talk about our highest priorities, but I expect he'll spend some portion of his remarks talking about job training and the importance of making sure that workers, including those in the skill trades, like construction, are trained to fill the high-paying, high-growth jobs. I think the Labor Department has put out some statistics -- which we'll get you in a fact sheet -- showing that the construction jobs are going to be growing significantly over the next several years. And we need to make sure that workers are trained to fill those jobs. And so I think he'll talk a little bit about that.
Q Yucca --
MR. McCLELLAN: I expect he probably will talk some about Yucca Mountain. The senator from Massachusetts was recently in Vegas, and it was interesting to hear his latest comments about Yucca Mountain. He is someone who has had changing positions on this issue. The senator has said one thing when he's in Nevada, but done another thing when he's in Washington, D.C. And so I expect the President will touch a little bit on the Yucca Mountain issue in his remarks.
Q This union -- has this union endorsed the President, or --
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think they've made an endorsement at this point. I'll double check with the campaign, and you might want to, as well. But my understanding was that they have not made an endorsement at this point.
Q So my review of his votes, or my office's review of his votes shows he never directly voted for Yucca Mountain.
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the campaign can provide you with some six votes and some other correspondence that might be available where Senator Kerry voted against Nevada and voted in support of the Yucca Mountain site. They can provide you with that information. Again, the senator says one thing when he goes to Nevada to campaign, but he has done another thing while in office in Washington, D.C. I think that's important for the people of Nevada to know. They know where the President stands.
Q Scott, what do you say, though, to the scientific community who say that it's unresolved, still, the issue of -- it's unresolved, the issue of whether or not that was a good idea, to allow that waste facility to --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- spoke to this the other day. I know that Secretary Abraham has spoken to it recently, as well. The President has always said that this is a decision that should be based on science. And that's what this administration has done in the decision-making process. The President is also strongly committed to making sure that all the necessary safety measures are in place to make sure that people in Nevada are safe. And we very much respect Nevada's right to pursue this case with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and pursue it in the courts.
Q So he didn't renege on his 2000 campaign promise?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I think that was Senator Kerry trying to divert attention away from the fact that he has acted one way in Washington, D.C., while saying another thing campaigning in Nevada.
Q What was --
MR. McCLELLAN: The President always said that this is a decision that should be based on the science, and not politics.
Q Critics say that he made --
MR. McCLELLAN: The President made it very clear. And, well, the Department of Energy has provided all the scientific evidence that the decision has been based on, and they can provide you with that information. But this is a decision that has been based on science. And I think the Senator now has taken a politically expedient position that runs counter to the actions he has taken in Washington, D.C.
Q Scott, do you know anything about the attack in Najaf, on Sadr's home -- that he wasn't there -- U.S. forces stormed the house, and he's holed up in another area?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I think that those are questions best directed to the interim government. I think that the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Interior are having a news conference in Iraq on the latest developments in Najaf. We are there to partner with Iraqi forces to help bring about security in Iraq. And Prime Minister Allawi has stated very strongly that he is determined to improve the security situation and bring stability to Najaf, and we're there to work with the Iraqi security forces. But they'll be having a news conference -- if they're not already -- later today.
Q Scott, Vice President Cheney said today that Kerry views the world as if the September 11th attacks never happened. Is that the President's view?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, I haven't seen exactly what the Vice President said. I'll be glad to take a look at it. But the Vice President is speaking as a member of this administration, obviously. And, you know, there are some clear differences when it comes to the war on terrorism. I think that there has been a clear misunderstanding of how we go about that war on terrorism, shown by Senator Kerry's comments and actions. This President recognizes that we must confront threats before it's too late, and that we must stay on the offensive to win the war on terrorism and defeat the terrorists and protect the American people. And that's what he's continuing to do.
Q Are we going to expect him to say anything about the sensitivity issue, running a sensitive war -- Kerry's remarks?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the Vice President talked very clearly about that earlier today.
Q Do you think Bush will say it, as well?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I don't expect so. I know it's what the Vice President said yesterday on Iraq, too, that the Senator continues to be all over the map when it comes to Iraq. The campaign -- his statements and the campaign's latest statements are just another in a series of contradictions and inconsistencies on his position -- about his position on Iraq.
Q Are these lines we might get from Bush?
MR. McCLELLAN: You'll be there to cover him today. You heard him talk about what Senator Kerry had said about troops. Of course, we know a while back he had said that he would look to the commanders to make those decisions, and then he changed his position and said that he would significantly reduce troops, but he wouldn't tell us what his plan to do that was. And now he's saying, well, it's a goal. And his campaign then had to try to clarify that further and said, well, it depends on circumstances on the ground. So he's been all over the map on Iraq on a number of issues. And then his campaign tried to clarify his position when he said that: let me answer the President's questions directly. And he said: yes, that's the answer to the question. And then they tried to clarify his position even further and said, well, it may not have been a vote to go to war. Well, in 1991, when the vote was going on for the authorization of force in the Persian Gulf, Senator Kerry then said: this isn't about sending a message, this is about going to war.
So there continues to be a series of inconsistencies and contradictions on Iraq.
Q Should we expect an Urban League-style speech today, where he makes a pitch to a union and asks these people the question why the Democrats are in their interest?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, you'll be there to cover the remarks, but he is competing hard for their votes. And he has a strong record when it comes to standing on the side of workers and working families. And he'll be talking about that record and his agenda going forward.
Q Is Arnold going to be at the thing tonight?
MR. MCCLELLAN: Yes.
Q Is he going to introduce him or --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, he is scheduled to be there. I'm not going to give any more specifics of all the introductions and things, but you'll be there to cover it. We're pleased to have him helping on the Bush-Cheney team in California.
Q Are you counting on him to help deliver the state for you?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the President is going to continue competing to win the state of California. And, again, we'll keep you posted. You'll be traveling with us. Stay tuned for some updates to the schedule later today in California. But this President is going to work hard to win the state of California, because he has a proven record of results and achievement that --
Q Are we -- go ahead, sorry.
MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead.
Q Are we adding some stops in California? Or what are you --
MR. McCLELLAN: I said we'll keep you posted.
Q You're dropping a pretty good hint here.
MR. McCLELLAN: We'll keep you posted.
Q Thanks.
END 10:08 A.M. PDT
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Las Vegas SUN
August 12, 2004
Energy Department won't wait for key Yucca issues to be resolved
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department will answer all 293 remaining scientific issues for the Yucca Mountain project by the end of the month, but will not wait for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deem them "closed" before submitting the project's license application.
The department believes its actions fulfill its part of the bargain established in September 2001 when the agencies agreed there were 293 "key technical issues" or KTIs, that needed to be resolved on the nuclear waste storage project. Nevada officials say the department is walking away from its commitment.
The department has submitted 264 of the 293 KTIs, but the commission has only deemed 105 complete, according to Joseph Ziegler, director of the Office of License and Application Strategy.
Ziegler told the commission that it does not intend to directly respond to any requests for additional information by the commission's staff on the remaining issues.
"DOE (Energy Department) expects that any questions or concerns of the NRC will be addressed within the context of the licensing process," Ziegler wrote in a July 23 letter to the commission. "If the NRC staff has any remaining questions or concerns, DOE will evaluate those concerns or concerns and determine an appropriate way to address the NRC staff's issue."
When the NRC determines the issue is "complete," it means there is enough information available to go through and see how the department reached its answer. It does not mean that department it right or wrong on a topic.
"This is the latest example of the Energy Department's arrogant approach in ignoring the law when it conflicts with the desire to bury nuclear waste in Nevada," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "They need to answer these questions now, not after the fact."
Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects sent a letter to the commission Monday pointing to the commission's own policy that said the KTIs would be complete before any license application would be accepted.
Former NRC Chairman Richard Meserve issued a letter in November 2001, which Nevada believes says all the KTIs must be completed before the department can submit its license application.
"In view of DOE disingenuously walking away from its long-standing commitment, and assuming the role of the licensee dictating terms to its licensing authority, NRC's silent acquiescence to DOE's conduct would be in conflict with the intent of its sufficiency letter," Loux wrote.
Rod McCullum, senior project manager for waste at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said the whole point of the KTI process was to get the department and the commission ready for the licensing process. He said he expects the commission to ask the department for more information on the license application anyway so this way everything can be done at once.
McCullum said comments made by the commission staff during several meetings have led him to believe it accepts this approach.
Critics of the program are still not convinced.
"This continues to demonstrate that the DOE is not interested in defending their theoretical 'sound science' record," said Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev. "It's quite obvious because they don't have one. If the DOE did, wouldn't they happily make sure these key technical questions are answered in its entirety?"
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Las Vegas SUN
August 12, 2004
Editorial: Real friend to Nevada on Yucca
Las Vegas SUN
President Bush's re-election campaign, supported by top Republican officials in Nevada, keeps trying to sully Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's strong record of opposition to the Yucca Mountain project. The Republican efforts are really pathetic because Kerry, unlike Bush, has been there for the residents of this state. In the most telling example of Kerry's leadership, in 2002 he voted against Bush's plan to send 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to Nevada. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which candidate is better for Nevadans on the biggest issue facing this state.
On his two-day campaign swing in Nevada this week, Kerry added to his anti-Yucca Mountain bona fides, declaring on Tuesday, "When I'm president of the United States, I'll tell you (this) about Yucca Mountain: Not on my watch." For those residents who still might be undecided, Kerry added this sweetener to the mix: He pledged to veto any legislation that would change the radiation standards at Yucca Mountain. This is a huge development because recently a federal appeals court said the Environmental Protection Agency didn't follow the law when establishing the radiation standards. Building a dump that would meet stringent safety standards as required by law would be impossible, a situation that should result in the project's demise.
Congress could get around the court's decision, however, by passing new legislation that would undo the tough standards in the existing law, thereby making the radiation standards easy to meet and resulting in the dump being built. It's an incredibly important reason why it's essential to have a president willing to wield his veto pen against any efforts to weaken the radiation standards -- and just why the stakes in this year's presidential election are so high for Nevadans.
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Las Vegas Sun
August 12, 2004
Letter: Yucca hardly state's top issue
Regarding your Aug. 4 editorial, "Yucca takes a back seat," I disagree with your assumption that Yucca Mountain is the issue that matters most to Nevadans. I live in Nevada and I couldn't care less about Yucca Mountain.
I have made drives around this state and have seen the endless miles of desolate ground. I'd much rather see nuclear waste stored there than somewhere like San Diego, the Great Lakes, or New York City. The waste must go somewhere, so why not put it in the middle of nowhere?
The people who work at Yucca Mountain are not worried about the effects of nuclear waste, yet those far away from it make it a safety issue. John Kerry has said that he would not put the waste here, but it has become evident that he will say anything to get our vote.
When all is said and done, the waste will be here anyhow. Let's focus on more important issues, like improved education for our children, the war on terror and the rebounding economy. When put into perspective, the only positive choice is President Bush.
Francy Johnson
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 12, 2004
Kerry vows to fight Yucca plan
Democrat says he will ask international experts to solve nuclear waste issue
By Erin Neff
Review-Journal
John Kerry said Wednesday that if elected president he'd do everything possible to halt the Yucca Mountain project, including withdrawing any licensing application that might be submitted for the project by the Bush administration to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Kerry spoke about Yucca Mountain for half of a 30-minute roundtable with six Nevada journalists after his health care meeting with seniors at the Valley View Recreation Center in Henderson.
"It's a serious promise," Kerry said.
The Democratic presidential candidate said he isn't concerned about pressure from the nuclear power industry or from other states -- including his home state of Massachusetts -- which have nuclear generators and waste stored on site.
"I know how to stand up to pressure," Kerry said.
Republicans have criticized Kerry's record on the issue because of several procedural votes over the years and, notably, a 1987 vote that made Yucca Mountain the only site for study as a potential repository.
"My vote in 1987 is the only substantive vote and that vote called for study," Kerry said of the votes highlighted by the Republicans. "We were presuming at that point in time though that they were going to do a safe analysis."
Kerry voted against interim storage in the 1990s and voted with Nevada in 2002 when Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was approved by the Bush administration for storing waste.
"My opposition has been on the basis of the analysis that has come back," Kerry said.
He said information he has learned in recent years leads him to believe geological burial of nuclear waste might not ever be possible.
"The more I have looked at the issue, the more I have learned about it, the less safe, the less comfortable I am with the possibility," Kerry said. "There's nothing yet that suggests to me it's fail-safe. I'm not prepared to go shut it into some place anywhere. Not just Yucca Mountain, anywhere."
Kerry announced Tuesday that he would create a panel of international experts to explore how to dispose of nuclear waste.
"I think there's an enormous potential for science to find something," Kerry said.
"I'm convinced we can come out of this with a much stronger counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, pro-environmental solution and that's what I'm going to do," he said.
Kerry said his two cabinet secretaries that would have Yucca oversight in some way -- Energy and Interior -- "will both be highly versed in these kinds of issues and will be strong managers to lead this country in a more thoughtful approach."
Asked how he would act under pressure from other states or industry groups, the Massachusetts senator said, "I've been there for 20 years. Look at my votes and you'll see I don't vote with them. I haven't voted for things that empower them to do things contrary to the public interest."
Kerry said he hopes to "translate pressure" into a solution for his panel of experts and plans to work with the nuclear industry to find a solution.
"I will sit at the table with them; talk to them; figure out what we're going to do, but we're not going to do (Yucca Mountain)."
"It ain't ready for prime time," he said.
On Tuesday, nuclear industry experts and other critics scoffed at Kerry's plans for Yucca Mountain, saying the parcel is the most studied piece of land on the planet. Rigorous independent reviews of the licensing process remain, they said, and deep geologic storage has been determined to be the safest route possible. The Bush-Cheney campaign accused Kerry of playing the issue in Nevada for its electoral votes.
During Wednesday's interview Kerry said all of the health care and education proposals he mentioned during his Tuesday rally at the Thomas & Mack Center could be funded by repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest 1.5 percent of Americans and by closing what he called tax loopholes.
Kerry said his health care plan would cost about $600 billion and increasing grants to college students and other educational programs would cost $300 billion.
"I'm not pretending it's for free," he said. "I'm not pretending that there aren't choices here. If you want health care, if you want to pay for special needs education, if you want No Child Left Behind fully funded, I have a way to do it."
Kerry said he opposed the way Bush has handled homeland security, from its inception to the current threat reporting system,.
Kerry said his administration will re-evaluate the threat reporting system, but he did not say he would scrap the color-coded method of raising and lowering the terror alerts.
He also promised a return trip to Las Vegas, a future trip to Northern Nevada and a visit to the state by vice presidential candidate John Edwards.
"I'll be back," he concluded, mimicking Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator character.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 12, 2004
Bush flying in to talk up economy
By Erin Neff
Review-Journal
President Bush is expected to tout the economy during his visit to Nevada today. But one campaign official confirmed he also will touch on an issue that is become contentious in this year's political season -- storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
Bush is expected to arrive at McCarran International Airport on Air Force One mid-morning and then head to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America International Training Center southeast of the airport to speak to union members.
His main focus at the event, which is closed to the public, will be on the economy.
"He will discuss the importance of job training in a changing economy, continuing to move our economy forward and (creating) an environment where small businesses can flourish," said Tracey Schmitt, regional spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Schmitt declined to comment on whether Yucca Mountain, which Bush approved in 2002 as the site for burial of the nation's nuclear waste, would be brought up.
The national carpenters union has worked with the Bush administration on an energy bill and on a pension issue.
Although its national union has not endorsed a presidential candidate, some union members say many rank-and-file members in Las Vegas are backing Democrat John Kerry.
The training center at 6801 Placid St., near Sunset Road and Gilespie Street, is a new $25 million facility on a campus setting that is a hallmark of the international union's training emphasis, according to center director Bill Irwin.
But there also is a Nevada Carpenters training center and union hall on Lamb Boulevard. One of the members there, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "If Bush tried to come here, we wouldn't let him in the door."
The member said Kerry has a better plan for union families.
The national union has not made an endorsement in this presidential race. Not a part of the AFL-CIO, the carpenters typically have a go-it-alone attitude, and leaders of the union in Nevada were happy to accept the campaign's invitation to see the facility and speak to the members.
But one carpenter, active with the union's political action committee, wore his shirt and a John Kerry button at the Thomas & Mack Center on Tuesday evening for Kerry's public rally.
"We, I mean people like me in the union, are not supporting Bush," said the carpenter, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
When Rep. Shelley Berkley began thanking various labor unions for their presence at Tuesday's rally, the crowd booed when she thanked carpenters.
Numerous labor and other organizations are planning to protest the visit at the Training Center.
Democrats are calling the president's visit the "me too tour," saying Bush is following Kerry's lead.
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Las Vegas SUN
August 11, 2004
Large utility makes deal on nuke waste
Government to pay company to keep on-site storage
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Sun Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The country's largest nuclear power company struck a deal with the government Tuesday that could equal $300 million in payments for storing nuclear waste on site rather than in a federal storage site.
The Chicago-based Exelon Corp. announced a settlement with the Justice Department on Tuesday saying it "resolves all pending spent fuel litigation" the company and its subsidiaries brought against the government. The company had three legal challenges against the government.
The Energy Department was supposed to take commercial power plants' spent nuclear fuel in 1998 but failed to do so. It now hopes to open the federal nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by 2010, although the state is fighting the plan.
Exelon and other nuclear companies have sued the government for failing to take the waste. The companies argue they have double the storage costs because they have to pay a fee into the Nuclear Waste Fund, which helps pay for the project while also paying to store their waste onsite.
Through the settlement, Exelon will receive $80 million immediately as reimbursement for the cost of keeping the waste on site, with more money expected each year until the site opens, according to the company. Exelon estimated if the sites opens in 2010, the company could receive about $300 million from the government.
Exelon operates 17 nuclear reactors and owns four shutdown reactors spread out on 11 sites in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It has 41,193 nuclear fuel assemblies in dry cask and pool storage, spokesman Craig Nesbit said.
Chris Cane, Exelon's president and chief nuclear officer, said in a statement that he was pleased with the settlement but that it cannot be considered a substitute for permanent storage at Yucca Mountain.
Angie Howard, executive vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's advocacy group that strongly supports the Yucca site, called the settlement "hugely significant and a direct result of the federal government's failure to meet its statutory and contractual obligations."
"The agreement means that taxpayers in every state -- including those who do not receive electricity supplies from nuclear power plants -- are now officially paying the costs of the federal government's failure to meet its obligations," Howard said in a statement.
"From this day forward, until the Yucca Mountain repository is open a minimum of six years from now, the meter will continue to run, costs will climb, and the burden of government inaction will continue to be borne by taxpayers from coast to coast," Howard said in a statement.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 11, 2004
Questions and answers with the Democratic presidential nominee
Editor´s note: The following is a selection of questions and answers from an interview Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry conducted with the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas columnist Jon Ralston.
Will you visit Reno?
Yes. We tried to get up there this trip, but it just didn´t work because of the logistics but very definitely. Absolutely.
We have in Fallon a leukemia cluster. Is there anything the White House can do in researching that?
Hugely. It´s not unrelated to Love Canal and the long history of toxicity that has been allowed. Too many of our kids all across the country are exposed to various elements that are human-induced and not conducive to good health, ranging from air quality to water quality to food and nutrition. We have an enormous amount of work to do as a country to educate people and to begin to set some standards on what we are going to do. ... And we have to track more effectively where you have clusters, where you have patterns of lung cancer or leukemia.
How soon after you take office would you be willing to order the Energy Department to either withdraw or withhold its application for Yucca Mountain?
Day one. Immediately. This is a serious promise. This is not something I´m going to study. I´ve studied it.
Does law enforcement share enough information about terrorism?
No. Law enforcement doesn´t share enough information. Homeland security is significantly less than it ought to be at this time. I think the administration has talked a big game and not walked the walk. Firehouses are understaffed. Cops are being cut from the streets in America. Ninety-five percent of containers that come into the country are not inspected. Nuclear facilities and chemical facilities have not been strengthened.
So you like the idea of doing more like they did in New York and New Jersey, where they had the information, versus a nationwide terrorist alert?
I do. Among other things I think that law enforcement needs to be particularly informed in an intelligent way. I´m not sure you need to inform the nation on every single thing, particularly when there is not very much they are asked to do, or they can do or are trained to do at this point in time. ... But I promise you this: You won´t have to struggle to get the answers out of us.
Last night you made a lot of promises on everything from programs for college kids and seniors. The question is how are you going to pay for all of it?
They are all paid for. I´ve shown how every program that I am passing is paid, including my health care. My health care plan is costed out versus the rollback of George Bush´s unaffordable tax cut, the loopholes we are going to close in the tax structure. I specifically paid for the education plan by changing the interest rate structure on college loans. Currently, it is set by Congress. It is a fixed rate. It is a high rate and it is basically a sweetheart deal for the lobbyists. I am going to float it as an auction. I am going to put it out there in the market place. We´re going to have true market place decisions. That will reduce the cost by ‘x´ billions of dollars and that goes directly into paying for the education plan. I´ve shown precisely how I´m going to give businesses a tax cut. I´m taking the money that currently rewards companies that go overseas and we´re going to reward the companies that stay here and try and create the jobs here. ... Everything that I´ve done, folks, I´ve tried to be completely up front about it to Americans. I´m not pretending it´s for free. I´m not pretending that there aren´t choices here.
Are you going to continue No Child Left Behind?
Yes. But I´m going to fix it. I´m going to make some changes in it. But the basic thrust of it is to have qualified teachers in schools to have standards and accountability. It´s to have measurements. And I want those things. I think we need to reform schools. But I want to empower teachers to do it properly. You can´t burden a teacher with a whole set of new standards and not give them the resources necessary to be able to teach those kids adequately. If your class size is too big, teachers can´t get to kids. They can´t do the remedial work necessary. If you have a school (that) doesn´t have an afternoon program, a lot of kids go home to empty homes. Those kids aren´t going to be safe or learn.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 11, 2004
Kerry outlines his agenda to Nevadans
State´s voters could decide Yucca issue, senator says
Anjeanette Damon
HENDERSON — Nevada voters could have the power to decide whether the nation´s most radioactive waste comes to the Silver State when they cast their vote for president this November, based on comments Wednesday by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
“I´ve . . . voted no, which puts me in a very different position from George Bush, who´s pushing to open the damn thing. There´s the difference. He wants to open it, I don´t. Big difference,’ Kerry said at a Henderson community center.
Republicans counter that Kerry´s voting record shows he can´t be trusted on the issue.
In a 20-minute interview with six Nevada reporters, Kerry promised to visit Reno during the campaign, further explained his opposition to Yucca Mountain and laid out how he would pay for his sweeping proposals for health care and education.
Yucca Mountain dominated the interview, much as it has dominated Southern Nevada politics for decades.
State Democrats have succeeded in elevating the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository to one of the most significant issues in the race for the presidency here. As a battleground state, Kerry and President Bush have focused unprecedented attention on Nevada.
In a Reno campaign speech earlier this summer, Bush did not mention his support of the project. But a Bush-Cheney campaign official said Wednesday the president plans to discuss Yucca Mountain in a speech today to the carpenters union in Las Vegas.
When asked about Northern Nevada, Kerry promised to visit Reno.
But when asked what he knows about Northern Nevada, he did little more than list issues important to most of the nation.
“I´ve been up there before,’ he said. “I like it. I think it´s got similar economic issues, development issues, jobs, obviously got some gaming components and some environmental issues.’
Asked about a leukemia cluster that has killed three children and sickened 16 others in Fallon, Kerry said he would make it a national priority to provide federal funding to communities that can´t afford to clean their air or water. He also said the nation needs to better track illness and focus on preventative medicine.
“This is something I really want to focus on as a country,’ he said.
Studies have not yet determined the cause of the Fallon cancer cluster.
Kerry said voters will determine whether Yucca Mountain is the state´s deciding issue in the presidential race, adding that he thinks Nevadans also care about health care and the economy. But he said the issue offers Nevada voters a stark contrast between the candidates.
Republicans have criticized Kerry´s vote for the “Screw Nevada Bill’ in 1987, which designated Nevada as the sole state to study for a nuclear repository.
“This is yet another issue on which John Kerry has flip-flopped and he continues to demonstrate his preference for political expediency over sound policy,’ said Tracey Schmitt, a Bush-Cheney campaign spokeswoman. “He is not credible on this or any other issue.’
Democrats have criticized Bush for a 2000 campaign promise to use “sound science’ when making his decision on Yucca Mountain. They argue Bush ignored scientific safety questions when he approved Yucca Mountain as the site.
A federal court recently found the government´s radiation safety standards fall far short of those required by the National Academy of Sciences.
Kerry defended his 1987 vote, saying the only thing it empowered was a study.
“Realistically, the people of Nevada need to look at the truth of the record here,’ he said. “Back in ´87, the idea of a national repository sounded like a reasonable thing, let´s study it. I think people would be happier with somebody that says, ‘Gee, I´m glad we studied it and I´m glad we learned something that raised a caution bell.´’
Kerry said the studies have convinced him that a nuclear waste repository is not safe.
To address the problem of waste stored at sites throughout the country, Kerry said he would convene a “blue-ribbon’ panel of international experts with the goal of discovering a way to destroy or use up the waste.
“I´m convinced we can come out of this with a much stronger counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, pro-environment solution and that is what I intend to do,’ Kerry said.
In a campaign speech Tuesday night to more than 13,000 people in Las Vegas, Kerry promised to increase grants to college students, make health insurance available to most Americans and never cut Social Security benefits.
During the interview Wednesday, he said he has outlined ways to pay for each of his proposals by creating a “pay-as-you-go’ budget.
He said he would increase revenue by rolling back “George Bush´s unaffordable tax cuts’ for the wealthiest Americans and closing tax loopholes that allow businesses to benefit from shipping jobs overseas.
“I´ve done a pay-as-you-go, folks,’ he said. “That´s what we did in the 1990s. We Democrats passed pay-as-you-go, we reduced the deficit and we paid down the debt for two years. We have credibility on this. We did it before and that is exactly the standard I´m going back to.’
Schmitt said Kerry´s “tax hikes’ won´t cover Kerry´s spending plan.
On homeland security, Kerry said the Bush administration has cut police funding, allowed cargo containers to enter the country without inspections and failed to adequately protect chemical and nuclear plants.
He also said he would “revamp’ the nation´s color-coded terror alert system, saying Americans “don´t know what the hell it means’ and don´t know what to do when an alert is issued.
Schmitt countered that Bush´s homeland security record is strong.
“Since 2001, President Bush has nearly tripled the amount of funds devoted to homeland security and he´s worked tirelessly to make America safer and more secure,’ she said.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 11, 2004
Letters for August 11
Don´t count on Kerry to stop nuke repository
A vote for Kerry is a vote against the Yucca Mountain depository. Or is it? Considering the shifting position he has taken on many major issues, can we trust his latest stance on Yucca Mountain? We need to be careful who we vote for; we just might get it.
John Kerry has cast seven “pro-Yucca’ votes since 1987, including one on a bill that included an infamous “Screw Nevada’ provision limiting studies for a potential dumpsite to Nevada´s Yucca Mountain. The provision was part of a massive $17.6 billion budget package.
We, the people of Nevada, have been led to believe that John Kerry is some sort of savior in our battle against the Yucca Mountain project. Kerry´s voting record shows just the opposite.
Glen Larsen, Gardnerville
In a July 29 article concerning Yucca Mountain, the Associated Press stated “The Bush Administration and Congress picked the site in 2002 to hold waste now stored at three military sites and commercial nuclear reactors across the country.’
Fact: The Yucca Mountain site was selected and approved in 1980 during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Diane Gordon, Gardnerville
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Record-Courier
August 11, 2004
Ensign says Nevadans cannot trust Kerry on Yucca Mountain
by Kurt Hildebrand
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., came to Minden to share his view that Nevadans may not be able to trust presidential candidate John Kerry's opposition of Yucca Mountain.
The senator held a press conference at the Carson Valley Inn on Monday to talk about Kerry's record on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Kerry guaranteed that as president he would not allow a nuclear waste dump to be placed in Nevada. Nevada is considered a battleground state in this year's presidential election.
Ensign accused Kerry of changing his opinion with the political breeze on a number of issues, including nuclear waste.
"Kerry says one thing and does something else to get elected," Ensign said. "People do change their minds over time, they evolve depending on what they learn. But he goes back and forth depending on what is politically viable at the time."
Ensign pointed out that Kerry has voted for appropriations for Yucca Mountain and against money Nevada needed to fight it.
The senator showed a 10-minute video highlighting Kerry's record on the war in Iraq, which Ensign said Kerry at first supported and then, to win the Democratic nomination, opposed. Ensign opposes storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain and has consistently voted against the administration on the issue.
"I disagree with the administration's position on Yucca Mountain, but at least I know where they stand," he said. "It's is not clear to me that Kerry will stick with Nevada."
Kerry voted for the 1987 "Screw Nevada" bill, which made Yucca Mountain the only site under study for the storage of nuclear waste.
However, he also voted in favor of President Bill Clinton's veto of Yucca Mountain as an interim storage site and against final designation of the site by President Bush.
-- Kurt Hildebrand can be reached at khildebrand@recordcourier.com or 782-5121, ext. 215.
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NPR
August 12, 2004
Science and the U.S. Presidential Campaign (audio)
NPR's Noah Adams speaks with NPR's Ira Flatow, host of Talk of the Nation Science Friday, about hot-button science-related political issues, such as stem-cell research, that are likely to affect this year's presidential campaign.
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MSNBC
August 12, 2004
Nuclear waste site is election land mine
Kerry challenges Bush over Yucca Mountain
MSNBC News Services
LAS VEGAS - Unpopular in Nevada, President Bush's decision to put a nuclear waste dump in the state is creating a close race there between the president and Democrat John Kerry, according to recent polls.
Bush´s problems in Nevada stem from Kerry tapping into voter anger over the president´s designation of Yucca Mountain as the national repository for nuclear waste.
In February 2002, Bush announced that five decades worth of nuclear waste from reactors across the country should be buried under the Nevada desert, declaring that an end to the search for a place to isolate the radioactive debris was necessary to “protect public safety, health and the nation´s security.’
Kerry says the president broke the promise he made in the 2000 race to ensure science and not politics determined his decision whether to ship waste to Yucca Mountain.
“When John Kerry is president, there is going to be no nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Period,’ he said at one Nevada campaign stop last Tuesday.
Kerry said he would leave waste at nuclear sites around the country while he instructs the National Academy of Science to study how the world should deal with nuclear waste and storage.
Voting record raised
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt pointed out that Kerry had voted for the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments, which was tacked onto budget legislation.
Kerry has noted that each time a Yucca vote was held on its own and not attached to other legislation, he has voted against it. His vice presidential running mate John Edwards, a senator from North Carolina, voted in 2002 for the Yucca plan, but campaign aides said he and Kerry are now on the same page.
Kerry said he is concerned about the safety and security of storing the waste 90 miles outside of Las Vegas at a mountain that sits atop the region´s major water supply. Kerry also noted seismic activity has been measured at the mountain and could pose a safety threat.
Kerry said the United States needed a Manhattan Project “to tame the negative consequences of the power of the atom.’
Politics of nuclear waste
While the issue is largely local, it could help determine the presidential race. Nevada is a key battleground state that Bush won in 2000 and without its five electoral votes would not be in the White House.
Sig Rogich, a prominent aide in the Reagan White House and in the first Bush administration, says Kerry is “pinning his hopes’ on the Yucca Mountain controversy because “there´s nothing else’ for the Democrat to run on in Nevada.
Adriana Martinez, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, says Yucca Mountain is a recruiting poster. “We get several e-mails a day from Republicans saying ‘We´d like to volunteer,’´ said Martinez. “We definitely have a good shot.’
A recent appeals court ruling raised questions about whether the waste repository will be built, or at least meet its target of 2010 to begin operation. The court ruled that the federal plan for Yucca Mountain does not go far enough to protect people from potential radiation.
Bush´s energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, says the project is moving ahead. Environmental groups and lawyers for Nevada say the court´s rejection of proposed radiation exposure limits could doom the project.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.
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Jim Hightower
August 12, 2004
BATTLING THE BIG SHOTS...AND WINNING!
For those who sit around whining that the Powers That Be are just too powerful, so there's no use even bothering with battling the bastards––take note and take heart in not one, not two, but three big court victories by grassroots battlers.
First is a coalition of environmental and citizen groups in the West Virginia area that has been battling the coal industry giants. For years, these groups have been trying to stop the industry from using a devastating, disgusting, and just plain dumb mining practice called "mountaintop removal." Instead of tunneling into the mountains to get at the coal, the corporations simply blow up the top third of the mountains, shove the rubble into valleys and streams below, then scoop out the coal. Not only is this unbelievably destructive, but, thanks to the coalition's determined push, a federal judge has now ruled that the permitting process that rubber stamps this abomination is illegal.
Next, a never-say-die coalition of environmental groups and Nevada officials have stunned the nuclear power giants who had concocted a cockamamie scheme to bury all of America's high-level nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. The cockamamie part is that this is an earthquake zone, the standards for protecting the public from long term radiation leaks are absurdly inadequate, and the hot stuff would be hauled for years on trucks and trains running right through our population centers. Now a federal appeals court has ruled in favor of the coalition, at least slowing this corporate rush to nuclear-powered insanity.
Third, a coalition of community radio broadcasters and citizen groups took on the media giants that had gotten lapdog regulators to allow the giants to grow ever larger, shrinking media competition, diversity, and our democracy. But now, a federal appeals court has ruled against the media Goliaths––in favor of the local Davids.
These battles are far from over, but grassroots forces are winning! To connect with all three of these fights, go to my website, jimhightower.com.
---
"Court Sets Back Federal Project On Atom Waste: Site's Safety Over Eons Is Focus of Decision." The New York Times, July 10, 2004.
"FCC Media giants lose in court ruling in expansion case." Austin American-Statesman, June 29, 2004.
"Federal Judge Rejects U.S. Application Process for Mountaintop Mining: The Army Corps of Engineers is told its permits violate the Clean Water Act." The New York Times, July 9, 2004.
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The State
August 12, 2004
Graham blasts Kerry over nuclear waste
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry´s stance against burying nuclear waste in Nevada drew a sharp response Wednesday from U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Graham said Kerry´s statements Tuesday put him at odds with South Carolina, which has 37 million gallons of high-level nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site that it needs to dispose of. The state also has high-level waste stored at commercial atomic power reactors.
“John Kerry´s action would destroy over two decades of work on a national repository to provide secure, long-term storage of nuclear waste materials,’ Graham said. “We don´t appreciate him trying to pull the rug out from under us.’
A Kerry spokesperson was not immediately available for comment Wednesday afternoon. Kerry, during a town-hall meeting Tuesday in Nevada, criticized President Bush for supporting the waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. He accused him of changing his position and allowing waste at the site.
Graham has received criticism from anti-nuclear groups for supporting a plan to leave residual amounts of high-level waste at SRS.
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Guardian
August 12, 2004
Bush, in Nev., Faces Nuclear Dump Fallout
Pete Yost
PHOENIX (AP) - Facing political fallout from an unpopular decision to put nuclear waste dump in the state, President Bush is rallying Republican support in Nevada where he wants to repeat his victory of four years ago.
Bush was campaigning Thursday before a friendly labor union in Nevada and raising money in Santa Monica, Calif., for the Republican Party.
On the third day of a cross-country campaign swing, Bush's problems in Nevada stem from rival John Kerry tapping into voter anger over the president's designation of Yucca Mountain as the national repository for nuclear waste.
The issue has stirred up such strong feelings in Nevada that it is creating a close race between the president and Kerry, according to recent polls.
Kerry says the president broke the promise he made in the 2000 race to ensure science and not politics determined his decision whether to ship waste to Yucca Mountain.
Sig Rogich, a prominent aide in the Reagan White House and in the first Bush administration, says Kerry is ``pinning his hopes'' on the Yucca Mountain controversy because ``there's nothing else'' for the Democrat to run on in Nevada.
Adriana Martinez, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, says Yucca Mountain is a recruiting poster.
``We get several e-mails a day from Republicans saying `We'd like to volunteer,''' said Martinez. ``We definitely have a good shot.''
A recent appeals court ruling raised questions about whether the waste repository will be built, or at least meet its target of 2010 to begin operation. The court ruled that the federal plan for Yucca Mountain does not go far enough to protect people from potential radiation. Bush's energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, says the project is moving ahead. Environmental groups and lawyers for Nevada say the court's rejection of proposed radiation exposure limits could doom the project.
A complicating factor for Bush in recapturing Nevada is that the state has hundreds of thousands of new residents since the 2000 presidential election. The influx at first trended Republican but lately has been moving in the other direction politically with many Hispanics coming to the state, says Rogich.
Rogich sees Bush winning the state because ``the president has been good to Nevada mining, ranching, farming and tourism. The economy is booming.''
Portraying himself as a man of the West, Bush attacked Kerry for alleged inconsistencies on the issue of clearing forest lands. On Wednesday night in Phoenix, Bush said Kerry criticized the Healthy Forests Restoration Act when the president signed it into law and that the Democrat now says he supports parts of the law as he campaigns in the West.
The act seeks to speed up the harvesting of trees on 20 million acres of federal forest land most at risk to wildfires.
``I guess it's not only the wildfires that shift with the wind,'' Bush told cheering supporters.
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Washington Times
August 12, 2004
Deja vote in the desert
The presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry often seems to embody Yogi Berra's line, "This is like deja vu all over again." Mr. Kerry takes a popular position in a potential swing state, only to have his Senate record show that he had often voted the opposite way.
Mr. Kerry committed that deja vu all over again earlier this week. While campaigning in Las Vegas for the five electoral votes of the currently deadlocked state of Nevada, Mr. Kerry declared his opposition to the high-level nuclear waste repository being built at Yucca Mountain: "I can sum up my stance on the Yucca Mountain Plan in four words: Not on my watch. As a senator, I voted against it. And as president, I will do everything in my power to ensure your backyard does not become America's nuclear waste dump."
Actually, Mr. Kerry did all that a senator could do to ensure that Nevada was the site of the waste repository in 1987 by voting for the "Screw Nevada" bill, which essentially singled out the state as the site of the nuclear waste repository. Mr. Kerry voted six other times for measures supporting the project. In 1987, he voted for a provision (different from the "Screw Nevada" bill) that made the Yucca project almost inevitable. In 1997, Mr. Kerry voted against a provision, sponsored by the minority whip, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, that would have required the written consent of governors for nuclear waste to be transported across state lines.
Messrs. Reid and Kerry now dismiss those pro-Yucca votes as meaningless and procedural. But as Mr. Reid's Senate Republican counterpart, Sen. John Ensign, noted, "[Mr Kerry's] voting record until 1997 is one of supporting the repository." Mr. Kerry's support went beyond that. Yesterday, the Las Vegas Sun reported that in 1999, Mr. Kerry and three other senators sent a letter to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman calling for "an accelerated [nuclear] waste acceptance schedule." The only possible place for those depositions was Yucca Mountain.
Mr. Kerry has attempted to use Yucca Mountain as an example of Mr. Bush's maladroit leadership. Yet the wasteland between the senator's rhetoric and his voting record has made it another example of his pandering and flip-flops. To prove that this wasn't mere election-year flip-flopping, perhaps Mr. Kerry would like to state publicly — before the election — which other battleground state he would instead propose for the nuclear-waste disposal site.
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Las Vegas Mercury
August 12, 2004
Editor's Note: Sorry, but Sierra Club is right on U.S. 95
The kneejerk wisdom is that the Sierra Club is out of control with its lawsuit to stop the U.S. 95 widening project. After the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided last month to halt future phases of the widening until the issues raised by the lawsuit can be debated further, a cloudburst of criticism poured down on the Sierra Club. Club members reported receiving nasty threats. Even normally level-headed commentators such as Review-Journal columnist Steve Sebelius and the Las Vegas Sun editorial page urged the environmental group to drop its case.
The primary concern is that the Sierra Club's lawsuit will unnecessarily delay the widening and thus lead to greater traffic congestion on U.S. 95. Which may be true. But this short-term thinking fails to consider the fundamental objective of the lawsuit and the potential long-term value if it succeeds.
The Sierra Club's specific legal case centers on the impact that air pollution from vehicles on the highway will have on nearby residents. This may or may not be a scientifically valid issue. But the bigger issue raised by the lawsuit is that there is no master transportation plan for the Las Vegas Valley.
Like so many important matters here, this just hasn't been adequately discussed. In the predominant Vegas mindset, there is only what is good for us today, and never mind next week, let alone next year or 10 years from now. What makes us happy right now is the only consideration on the table.
As a result, we don't really plan for the long term. The widening of U.S. 95 is a good example of this. With continuing growth in the northwest valley, the widened highway slated to open a few years from now will be just as congested as the narrower highway is today.
What the Sierra Club is saying is fairly simple: Widening U.S. 95 may be a legitimate part of the program to improve traffic flow in Las Vegas, but it should be just one of several responses to the problem. Standing alone, it is far from a panacea.
There are other ways to reduce traffic congestion on U.S. 95. For example, we know that many northwest residents work on the south Strip. Maybe a program could be set up to entice those Strip workers to park their cars at some designated place in the northwest and ride an express bus to work. The bus or buses could be dedicated to south Strip employees and there would be no stops before their destination. MGM Mirage Mandalay, or whatever the merged monolith will be called, could provide significant incentives for its employees to take the bus. Perhaps a similar program could be established for Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson's workers on the north Strip.
Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, says he isn't a traffic planner and therefore doesn't have detailed solutions to U.S. 95 congestion. But he says the Federal Highway Administration's lack of a master plan is galling. "Obviously people are very frustrated by the traffic situation in Las Vegas," Pope says. "But the reality is that you can't solve gridlock just by paving. You need to have an intelligent and diverse solution. You need to sit down with the community and the experts and figure out not just a highway but a solution. That's what we haven't been able to get from the highway administration."
A more ambitious commuter transit system clearly has to be in Las Vegas' future. If, as expected, our population doubles in the next 20 years, I guarantee 10 lanes on U.S. 95 isn't going to cut it. Light rail has been the option of choice in other metropolitan communities, including car-loving Western cities, but it's very expensive. Nonetheless, Pope says, the key is to plan now. "You gotta think ahead, because by the time you finish this freeway, it will be as crowded as the old one was," he says.
Pope says the FHA's approach brings to mind the attitude of the Department of Energy in its efforts to dump high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. "Both involve arrogant federal agencies deciding on solutions before finishing the studies," he says. "It's a top-down bureaucratic attitude. They don't solve the problem, they just build the facility."
A large majority of Nevadans opposes the DOE's plan to dump nuclear waste 90 miles from Las Vegas. The state of Nevada has used legal action to try to stop the project. Yucca Mountain critics rejoiced last month when a federal appeals court sided with Nevada and threw a big wrench in the DOE's plans.
There is a strong parallel here with the Sierra Club's lawsuit. The short-term pain of a delayed U.S. 95 widening could result in a long-term gain of a true, visionary transportation plan for the valley. Maybe we should embrace these tree-huggers rather than try to cut them down.
--Geoff Schumacher
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Las Vegas Mercury
August 12, 2004
Door-to-door activism
Nevada's battleground status breeds grassroots campaigns
By Vince Keenan
Courtney Watson of Las Vegas isn't running for office, but she's in campaign mode.
Watson is talking up the environment, saying Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry cares much more about it than his Republican rival, President Bush. To help get her point across, the full-time Sierra Club staffer leads volunteers door-to-door for up to two hours at a time Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings in the Las Vegas area. Then on Tuesday and Thursday nights, she and her helpers unleash a torrent of calls via telephone banks from the environmental organization's local office.
But they're not the only paid and volunteer grassroots canvassers in town these days boosting the Democratic ticket. Like bees on honey, at least two other national political action groups also have descended on Nevada, one of 17 swing states that posted slim ballot margins in 2000's nip-and-tuck battle for the White House.
"Nevada is a very, very important state in this election," says Watson, a Sierra Club conservation organizer.
Staging activities primarily in Las Vegas and Reno, America Coming Together and the MoveOn Political Action Committee also are trying to lay groundwork that could tip the scales against Bush on Election Day, Nov. 2.
"We're knocking on doors, we're calling voters to follow up, we're doing site registrations for voter registration," said Terence Tolbert, state director of America Coming Together, which aims to register and mobilize voters in order to elect "progressive" candidates at the local, state and federal levels. The group recently demonstrated locally against Bush environmental policies, taking part in a protest Aug. 5 to coincide with Interior Secretary Gale Norton's visit to Las Vegas.
Like the Sierra Club, ACT is telling voters that the upcoming election could very well decide the fate of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository proposal. "Yucca Mountain is a huge issue here," Tolbert said.
He said before being elected president, Bush vowed to base his deliberations on "sound science"--and not politics--in making any decision on burying radioactive waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But the president reneged on his promise, Tolbert charged.
Paul Carman of Henderson, a volunteer for MoveOn PAC, also alleges Bush went back on his word regarding Yucca Mountain. Carman believes a Kerry victory would be the state's best shot at warding off the proposal. He said Kerry's record contrasts sharply with Bush's when it comes to the environment. "The importance of Yucca Mountain is it shows the true character of the two people running," Carman explained.
State Republican Party Executive Director Chris Carr said groups such as MoveOn are making Yucca Mountain out to be a Republican proposal. "They continue to use Yucca Mountain as a political football," Carr said. He said the fact is that state GOP lawmakers as well as the party's congressional delegation oppose the idea. "This is one issue we disagree with the president on," Carr said.
MoveOn says it sticks up for democracy at the grassroots level, particularly when elected officials' actions counter public opinion. In the latest of a string of publicity events, the group planned to deliver thousands of petitions last Monday to state GOP headquarters on West Sahara Avenue asking the party to "renew" its opposition to the Yucca Mountain project.
"Up to a year or two ago, state Republicans were against making a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain. Frankly, I just think they rolled over," Carman said.
MoveOn also conducted a voter registration drive a few weeks ago, Carman said. And about a month ago, MoveOn publicized Bush critic Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9/11, before an audience of hundreds at UNLV, Carman added. He said he wants the group's message to permeate party lines.
"We'd like to target those people who voted for Bush but don't like what he's accomplished, or failed to accomplish, in the last four years," Carman said. "We can look at a lot of things. The war in Iraq, the downturn in the economy. We have talked to a lot of Republicans who are voting for Kerry this time."
Nevada Sierra Club members and supporters held a press conference Aug. 5 at the Culinary Workers Union Hall, headlined by Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, as well as state Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce, D-Las Vegas. The event was intended to kick off the Sierra Club's "Las Vegas Environmental Voter Education Campaign."
"In the next 88 days we need to talk to our family members and neighbors about voting," Pierce told the crowd of about 75. "This is a part of the effort that is going to determine the quality of life for years to come."
Pope, who flew in from San Francisco to speak at the event, stressed the importance of fighting voter apathy by firing up the individuals who usually sit out political elections. They're the ones who will determine the outcome of the election, not the swing voters, he said. "We need to reinforce these people's commitment," he said.
Republicans also have volunteer troops in action. "Right now we're doing voter I.D.," Carr explained, "and we're doing voter registrations--everything from door-to-door to phone banks, where we're calling high-growth areas asking people if they'd like to register to vote. Heavily populated areas. Traditional Republican areas."
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Knight-Ridder
August 11, 2004
Bush right behind Kerry on tour of Southwest
By William Douglas
Knight Ridder Newspapers
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -The road to the White House has taken a sharp turn this year to the Southwest, where changing demographics, fast growth and shifting political sensibilities could make the region decisive in November.
President Bush swooped into New Mexico and Arizona on Wednesday just days after Democratic nominee John Kerry's campaign train roared through on his way to Nevada, where Bush follows Thursday.
Polls show all three states could go either way. Arizona has 10 electoral votes, New Mexico and Nevada five each. In a close election like the one in 2000, any one of them could make the difference, so the land of high desert and hot peppers is getting more attention in this presidential campaign than ever before.
The political landscape of the Southwestern states has shifted dramatically, in large part to an influx of new residents from costly and overcrowded California, from the harsh winters of the Midwest and from impoverished Mexican villages. Arizona's population alone grew by 40 percent in the 1990s, and the pace hasn't slackened. The newcomers have brought their political allegiances with them, political analysts say.
In 2000, former Vice President Al Gore won New Mexico by a mere 366 votes. Bush won Arizona handily, by 51-45 percent, but two years later Democrat Janet Napolitano was elected governor, which persuaded Democrats that Kerry has a shot at victory there too.
Bush won Nevada similarly in 2000, 50-46 percent, but then he decided to make that state's Yucca Mountain the permanent repository of the nation's deadly nuclear waste. Kerry opposes that, which could tip that state to the Democrat this time.
Colorado, too, is a swing state this year, even though Bush won it 51-42 percent last time, because of many of the same social changes that are affecting its neighbors.
"I think the big surprise is we've got four states we're competing in right now. We can win any one of them." Kerry strategist Tad Devine said.
In Albuquerque, N.M., on Wednesday, Bush attacked Kerry on the economy, accused him of conflicting positions on the war in Iraq and said the Massachusetts senator had erred by suggesting a timeline for reducing troop strength there.
"I know what I'm doing when it comes to winning this war," the president told supporters. "I'm not going to be sending mixed signals."
Wednesday's trip was Bush's third visit to the state this year. Vice President Dick Cheney also has passed through, though his visit last month stirred controversy when his campaign required attendees to a rally to sign a loyalty pledge as the price of admission.
The numbers in New Mexico seem to tilt in Kerry's favor: Fifty-two percent of voters are registered Democrats and only 32 percent are Republicans. Even so, that doesn't spell a slam-dunk for Kerry.
"If a Democrat is painted as too liberal or out of touch, a Republican can win," said Brian Sanderoff, an independent New Mexico political analyst.
Carrie McCarthy, a marketing director in an art gallery on a trendy Santa Fe, N.M. street, agreed.
"Santa Fe is a little pocket of surface liberalism," said McCarthy, a Kerry supporter who moved to New Mexico from Chicago four years ago. "The city was a hippie hideaway for a long time. But with the influx of wealthy second-home people, it's not as liberal as it used to be."
The president used a talk-show-style campaign event in Albuquerque to trumpet his Southwest roots and take a veiled dig at Kerry's Massachusetts background.
"We're right on the other side of the New Mexico border; we've spent a lot of time in this state," Bush said of himself and his wife, Laura. "We don't have to have a tour guide to figure out how to get around. We don't need somebody to explain to us how the people of New Mexico think."
Kerry was in nearby Nevada, campaigning before an audience of senior citizens in Henderson, Nev., where he called for allowing drugs to be imported from Canada.
Bush will visit Nevada on Thursday.
Bush's campaign officials said they weren't shadowing Kerry, but several Southwestern analysts said it was no coincidence that, in this region, the president's campaign schedule mirrored Kerry's.
"These candidates need to get out in the states and get the free local media coverage," said Pat Kenney, the chairman of Arizona State University's political science department. "Bush seems to be trailing Kerry around so as not to let him get unanswered local media coverage."
Both campaigns are eyeing the Hispanic vote, which could be huge. New Mexico's population is 42 percent Hispanic, and Arizona's is 25 percent, though voter registration trails those percentages.
Polls show Kerry ahead with Hispanics nationally by a 2-to-1 margin. Bush received 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000 and his campaign has been working to attract more. Some of his TV ads run exclusively in Spanish, and Bush occasionally drops Spanish phrases on the stump.
"The president made inroads, but I don't think it was as significant as they thought it would be," said Adrian Pantoja, an Arizona State University political scientist who specializes in Hispanic issues. "Will they continue to make further inroads? It remains to be seen. Are the Republican initiatives resonating with Hispanic voters? The answer is we don't know."
Looking for another edge, Kerry's campaign has begun cultivating the Southwest's Native American population, which traditionally has voted in low numbers.
Native Americans have stayed away from the polls in part because of their distrust in the federal government, ignorance of the voting process and difficulty in registering to vote, election officials and tribal leaders said. In New Mexico, for example, voter registration forms have a section in which an applicant can draw a map to his or her home to help election officials locate it.
Kerry hopes to take advantage of voter-registration efforts aimed at Native Americans by groups such as Moving America Forward, an organization formed by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who's also a Democrat.
"The greatest difficulty is distrust of the government," said Amber Carillo, a Native American coordinator for the group.
Larry Perez, a Taos Pueblo Indian who recently moved back to New Mexico from Florida, filled out a registration form and vowed to hold his nose and vote in November.
"I don't want Bush back there, but I don't like Kerry. I wish there were someone else running because I don't think he (Kerry) can win," Perez said.
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(Staff writer Thomas Fitzgerald contributed to this report from Henderson, Nev., with Kerry.)
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UNR
August 5, 2004
Scientists discover 'moving mountains'
8/5/04 - University of Nevada, Reno researchers have for the first time recorded a cluster of nearly 1,600 small earthquakes 20 miles beneath Lake Tahoe – the world´s second-largest alpine lake. Based on observations from the university´s Nevada Seismic Network and an ultra-sensitive Global Positioning System (GPS) station at Slide Mountain, the researchers believe the quake cluster coincided with an unprecedented 8-millimeter uplifting of the ski resort mountain in the Sierra Nevada.
“We´ve been watching earthquakes for 30 years in the Tahoe area and have never witnessed an earthquake ‘swarm´ anything like this,’ said Ken Smith, research seismologist at the university´s Nevada Seismological Laboratory and principal author of an article to be published in August in the journal, Science, and on its Science Express Web site on Aug. 5.
The deep earthquake activity occurred from Aug. 12, 2003 through Feb. 19, 2004 and then stopped.
“We haven´t seen any more deep earthquakes or notable movement at the Slide Mountain GPS station since,’ Smith said.
Geoff Blewitt, a research geophysicist with the university´s Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and co-author of the Science article, added that the centimeter uplift at Slide Mountain “can be explained by the movement of magma about 20 miles deep, which forced several miles of rock apart by about 1 meter.’
He added that he and his colleagues believe the rapid growth of this fissure caused the series of earthquakes — no greater than magnitude 2.2 — that caused the mountain to rise.
The university´s Nevada Seismological Laboratory operates some 40 real-time seismograph stations in Nevada and eastern California near Lake Tahoe and more than 200 stations throughout the region. Its modern digital seismic instruments can sense the tiniest earthquakes even at depths of 20 miles below the surface.
This network is supported by the U. S. Geological Survey as part of the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program, the U. S. Department of Energy, and by the State of Nevada. The university´s network is part of the Advanced National Seismic System. The GPS stations are supported by the National Science Foundation and the U. S. Department of Energy.
The eastern side of the Sierra Nevada is the West´s third most seismically active area behind only Alaska and the San Andreas fault system in California. A number of active faults, capable of earthquakes as large as magnitude 7, have been identified in the Lake Tahoe basin. In fact, university researchers noted that over the past several million years, Lake Tahoe itself has been created by repeated earthquakes on the West Tahoe Fault, which runs along the lake´s bottom and western side.
The eastern front of the Sierra Nevada represents one of the fundamental tectonic boundaries in the United States. The mountain range moves at a rate of about 12 to14 millimeters per year to the northwest. Researchers believe the deep event observed at Lake Tahoe is part of the process of the evolution and westward growth of the Basin and Range Province.
Co-authors of the article, “Moving Mountains and Lower Crustal Earthquakes at Lake Tahoe, California: Evidence for 30 km Deep Magma Injection’ are Kenneth Smith, David von Seggern, Geoffrey Blewitt, Leiph Preston, John Anderson (all at University of Nevada, Reno), Brian Wernicke (California Institute of Technology); and James Davis (Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics).
The University of Nevada, Reno has one of the world´s most respected seismology research and earthquake engineering teams. Its Nevada Seismological Laboratory has overall responsibility for instrumental studies of earthquakes throughout the Silver State. This laboratory serves as a repository of information and a resource for the public on earthquake activity, risks and safety measures in Nevada and adjoining states.
The university´s Nevada Seismic Network´s 200 stations locate over 7,000 earthquakes per year. Reno and Las Vegas are among the 30 urban centers in the nation with the highest estimated annualized earthquake loss, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Geodesy Group at the university´s Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology operates a 36-station GPS network spanning the Central Nevada Seismic Belt and the northern Walker Lane, capable of monitoring sub-millimeter motions of the Earth´s surface, which continuously deforms as stress builds up between earthquakes.
The Geodesy Group is also using the same GPS technology to monitor both the geological stability of the Yucca Mountain region and land subsidence due to ground water extraction in Las Vegas Valley. The group made the recent discovery that global redistribution of surface water is the leading cause for the “wobble’ of Earth´s pole of rotation.
In addition, the university´s Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research boasts one of the United States´ top earthquake simulation laboratories. The $30 million laboratory includes the nation´s only set of three 50-ton “shake’ tables that are able to simulate large earthquakes.
The university is a member of the National Science Foundation´s Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, an exclusive group of only 15 universities involved in carrying out research and obtaining information vital for reducing the nation´s vulnerability to catastrophic earthquakes.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 11, 2004
Lawsuit gets Jan. 10 hearing
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials will be in court on Jan. 10, when a trio of federal judges is scheduled to hear the state's case to gain easier access to federal money to challenge the Yucca Mountain Project.
Attorneys filed a lawsuit on March 17 that alleged the Department of Energy was shortchanging the state on money to monitor the proposed nuclear waste repository.
DOE officials said they were limited to giving Nevada only as much as Congress designates each year.
The U.S. Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 10.
The three judges will be A. Raymond Randolph, who was appointed by the first President Bush, and David Tatel and Merrick Garland, who were appointed by President Clinton.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 11, 2004
'No nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain'
Kerry pledges panel of experts will study issue
By Erin Neff And Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry urged the Bush administration Tuesday to halt the licensing process for the Yucca Mountain Project, telling an audience he would establish a blue-ribbon panel of experts to recommend how to best store and dispose of the nation's nuclear waste.
At a Las Vegas middle school, Kerry reaffirmed a pledge he made in May when he visited Las Vegas that, if he is elected, "there's going to be no nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain."
He repeated the message at an evening rally before an estimated crowd of more than 12,000 people at the Thomas & Mack Center, where he touched on themes he has been taking to battleground states across the country. His half-hour speech highlighted his plans to help the middle class, implement a renewable energy policy and increase financial help for college students.
Earlier, at Cadwallader Middle School, he offered details for the first time about what he would do as president to ensure Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, would not become home to the nation's most lethal nuclear waste.
He received a warm reception from the 75 people who were screened and selected by the campaign to be at the event, which was closed to the public. But nuclear industry backers and other officials scoffed at his strategy, saying it could backfire on him and that he was playing the issue for votes.
Kerry proposed leaving the waste at 139 sites across the country, where it could be guarded by those who already are supposed to be protecting nuclear plants against terrorist attacks.
His strategy would initiate a National Academy of Sciences study to examine geologic disposal as opposed other options such as long-term on-site storage or some other technology.
And Kerry likened his proposed blue-ribbon panel to the Manhattan Project, whose work led to creation of the first nuclear weaponry. He suggested his panel would have a "reverse" mission.
"We need a Manhattan Project that learns how to tame the negative consequences of that power of the atom, and we need to bring the world together to do it," Kerry said. "If we did a better job of showing that we want to do that, rather than going down the road of creating the next new nuclear weapon for bunker busting purposes, we'd do a lot better job of sending a message to Iran and to North Korea and to the rest of the world that the United States is serious about living in a non-nuclear world."
Nuclear industry officials were critical of Kerry's call to President Bush to hold off on a license application.
"Instead of taking action to move this federal project forward after 20 years and $8 billion of peer-review science, John Kerry is digging a hole for himself among some 30 states that are awaiting opening of a federal repository," said Angelina Howard, executive vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry's lobbying arm.
Howard noted that Yucca Mountain "is the most studied piece of land on the planet" and that studies on how to dispose of the nation's spent nuclear fuel and where to put it have eclipsed five presidents, including eight years of the Clinton administration.
"It's necessary and appropriate that the Energy Department continue with its preparation of the license application, which will then undergo rigorous independent reviews and evidentiary hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Howard said by telephone. "If it doesn't stand the test of the NRC, it wouldn't go forward."
But Nevada's lead nuclear waste lawyer, Joe Egan, said it would be simple for a victorious Kerry to halt the license application.
"Just tell the secretary of energy not to submit it," Egan said.
Even if the Bush administration manages to meet its target date to submit an application in December after the election, which Egan doubts can be done, then he said Kerry could instruct his energy secretary to withdraw the application.
Robert List, a former Nevada governor who is a Nuclear Energy Institute consultant, said there is nothing innovative about Kerry's plan for derailing the Yucca Mountain Project. Two decades of studies point to deep, geologic storage "as the safest and best way to do it," List said.
"The bottom line is he's clearly playing politics to get Nevada's electoral votes. He's trying to turn a scientific decision into a political one and I think the people of Nevada will see right through it."
The White House referred calls about Kerry's comments to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Department of Energy did not return calls.
Tracey Schmitt, regional spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, also said Kerry was playing politics.
"That's political rhetoric 80-something days from an election," Schmitt said. "President Bush has always said the decision should be based on science, not politics. We need to keep science at the center of the debate."
Asked about the proposals Kerry made, Schmitt said, "This is an issue that has been researched for over 20 years."
Kerry discussed portions of that research, referencing reports by the General Accounting Office, independent scientists and the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, all suggesting scientific flaws in the Yucca Mountain Project.
"If that ain't scary, I don't know what is," Kerry said after quoting from one GAO report.
He expressed concern about seismic activity, untested transportation canisters and the potential for contamination of the water supply in Nye County's Amargosa Valley.
Kerry worked to appeal Nevada's issue to a national audience as he looked out at national press traveling with him.
"This is not just a Nevada issue," Kerry said. "This is not just about Yucca Mountain. This is about America."
Kerry said the Bush administration "has pursued a relentless, purposeful policy to push the science no matter what the science says."
He said the country "deserves a president who believes in science. It's not just the science of Yucca Mountain, it's the science of global warming, it's the science of stem-cell research and the possibility of the future."
Prior to the event, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Kerry has been on Nevada's side whenever the issue was critical, recounting the statement Bush issued during the 2000 campaign that a decision on Yucca Mountain would be based on "sound science, not politics." Democrats have long criticized that statement as empty rhetoric.
Reid also defended Kerry on the six votes he has taken over the past 16 years that were different than his own on Yucca Mountain, including Kerry's 1987 vote for the so-called "Screw Nevada" bill. The appropriations bill had language added in conference committee to narrow repository study to Yucca Mountain only, from a list of three sites.
"President Bush and his people are of course saying anything that they can, because Bush has been a total flop," Reid said. "He misled the people of Nevada, and he lied to the people of Nevada."
Kerry also addressed the Bush-Cheney accusations about his Yucca Mountain record. Kerry said he has voted with Nevada "when it has counted on real votes."
Kerry voted against interim storage in the 1990s and voted in 2002 to sustain Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of Bush's designation of Yucca as the repository.
National Academy of Sciences officials who deal with Yucca Mountain issues could not be reached late Tuesday for comment on Kerry's plan.
Candice Trummell, vice chairwoman of the Nye County Commission, said she was dismayed the Kerry camp didn't allow her to listen to his talk Tuesday afternoon.
"The entire event was orchestrated to keep other voices out and only hear one side of the story," Trummell said.
The Nye County Commission passed a resolution last month that was more supportive of the Yucca Mountain Project.
"My concern, of course, is Yucca Mountain is in Nye County, not Clark County and the first responders are going to come from Nye County," she said.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
August 10, 2004
Kerry rallies Democrats over nuclear waste dump
GOP says candidate flip-flopped on Nevada´s most significant issue
Anjeanette Damon
LAS VEGAS — Speaking to a cheering crowd in a Las Vegas auditorium, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry promised more grants for college students, health care for every child, never to cut Social Security benefits and delivered a pointed vow to kill plans to ship the nation´s most radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain.
His speech offered no plans for paying for those promises, for which the Republican Party has long criticized him.
The senator from Massachusetts seized on Yucca Mountain as a significant issue in Nevada, considered a battleground state in the race for the presidency.
State Democrats never miss an opportunity to criticize President Bush´s support of the project and were disappointed when Bush didn´t address it in his Reno speech earlier this summer.
“My votes show you this is not an election campaign promise. When I´m president of the United States, I´ll tell you about Yucca Mountain: Not on my watch,’ Kerry shouted to a roaring crowd at the Thomas and Mack Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“Look at my record. I don´t come to people during a race and say one thing and do another afterwards. You can take this to the bank.’
Nevada recently won a key court decision in its fight against Yucca Mountain. A federal court ruled the government´s safety standards fell short of those set by the National Academy of Sciences.
Kerry vowed to veto any legislation that would allow the project to continue without conforming to the NAS´s guidelines for radiation protection.
“And I´ll tell you what else, if they try to change the standards on radiation at the EPA and they send it to my desk, veto pen, done, out,’ Kerry said.
Republicans have called Kerry a “flip-flopper’ on Yucca Mountain, pointing to his 1987 vote for the “Screw Nevada Bill,’ which allowed the government to focus solely on Nevada for the waste site.
“John Kerry continues to mislead voters about his record on Yucca Mountain,’ said U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. “His voting record until 1997 is one of supporting the repository and he voted to make Nevada the sole repository site for waste. It is clear that John Kerry is someone who will say anything to anyone if he thinks it will win him votes, and his selection of John Edwards is further evidence of this.’
Democrats point to Kerry´s strong record of voting against the project, including his 2002 vote to sustain Gov. Kenny Guinn´s veto of the Yucca Mountain site.
Bush-Cheney spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said she didn´t know if Bush planned to address Yucca Mountain when he visits Las Vegas on Thursday or whether Vice President Dick Cheney will discuss it when he visits Elko on Saturday.
With sleeves rolled up, Kerry wandered the stage like a college professor, speaking without notes and often reminding the crowd of more than 13,000 to quiet down and listen to him.
“This is important,’ he repeated several times before explaining his vision for homeland security. “There is a better way for the United States of America to make itself safe.’
Kerry said he would build an international coalition to stabilize Iraq, to “take the target off of American troops, get the hand out of the American taxpayer´s pocket and get our troops home.’
He reminded the crowd of his service in the Vietnam War, saying he would bring that experience to the position of commander in chief.
Carissa Snedecker of Silver Springs said she´s heard much of Kerry´s speech before, but said she still was inspired by it.
“It is his usual speech and I´ve heard versions of it,’ she said. “But he´s right about so much.’
Snedecker, who has helped organize rural Democrats this year, was among several Northern Nevadans who were introduced to Kerry after his speech.
Washoe County Democrats have been waiting for Kerry, who has made three campaign stops in Las Vegas, to visit the northern part of the state. Snedecker said Kerry mentioned the campaign would try to send Edwards.
Kerry is scheduled to speak to senior citizens today in Henderson before traveling to Los Angeles.
Schmitt criticized Kerry´s remarks in Las Vegas, saying they “signal his belief in big government.’
“John Kerry should explain why he does not believe in the president´s positive agenda that has resulted in Nevada having the lowest unemployment rate in the nation and over 50,000 new jobs in the last year,’ Schmitt said.
Rosary Fitzgerald, a student at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Kerry´s pledge to improve funding for college was key. She attended the speech while home in Las Vegas for the summer.
“I only go to UNR because I have a Pell grant and because I became a Trio Scholar, which is government subsidized,’ she said. “I like that he didn´t have campaign promises and that he had an actual plan.’
Kerry cautioned that his offer of tuition assistance “isn´t a freebie.’ In exchange, college students must mentor at-risk kids, work as volunteers and take jobs as schoolteachers.
Kerry´s promise to be “believer in science’ and extend stem cell research to find cures for debilitating diseases struck Stacey Varrette, whose husband is recovering from surgery to remove a brain tumor.
“You never know, it may help him,’ said Varrette, a Las Vegas teacher.
She and her husband, John, brought their 8-year-old son, Chris, to hear Kerry´s speech.
“I wanted him to come so he could experience this,’ John Varrette said.
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Mother Jones
August 11, 2004
The Wild, Wild Wars in the West
There's a panoply of glaringly weird things going on in Nevada. But who would know? The state exists as a hole in public consciousness.
By Rebecca Solnit
In July, the Feds handed down to Nevada its bitterest defeat and sweetest victory in ages; the former, a termination of thousands of years of Western Shoshone history; the latter, a reprieve from an apocalyptic future as the world's biggest -- and maybe dumbest -- nuclear waste dump. In one three-day period, Nevada's past got cancelled while its future was salvaged. But this Indian war and these nuclear politics are just part of a panoply of glaringly weird things going on in the state; there's a gold rush, a water war, and vast military operations, just for starters, and all of them are ecological bad news.
Nevada's invisibility may be as alarming as the apocalyptic dimensions of its plight. The state is a truly peculiar place, a hole in public consciousness. Where else could you set off a thousand nuclear bombs unhindered -- from 1951 to 1991 at the Nevada Test Site -- while even most antinuclear activists were arguing about nuclear war as a terrible possibility rather than an ongoing regional catastrophe? Once nuclear testing went underground in 1963, and American babies stopped having fallout-induced radioactive milk teeth, Nevada fell off the map even as the nuke-a-month program continued unimpeded for almost three more decades.
Western Shoshone Showdown
Across the U.S., the contemporary Indian wars are invisible in part because most non-Native Americans believe they all happened in the picturesque past, in part because they're fought by other means, in part because the mainstream media don't give a damn. One of the most egregious of them has been the ongoing battle between the Western Shoshone and the federal government for title to most of Nevada. It began in 1848 when the U.S. government claimed the Southwest from Mexico, heated up in the post--World War II era when the Shoshone went to court to protect their rights, and may have ended July 7, when President Bush signed into effect the Western Shoshone Distribution Bill.
That bill dishes out money the government set aside a few decades ago as payment for much of eastern and southern Nevada. The area had looked so worthless to the bureaucrats of the nineteenth century that they drew up a treaty letting the Western Shoshone, unlike most indigenous nations, retain title to their lands. The bureaucrats of the twentieth century realized that the best way to seize title to Nevada was to pretend that the land had already been taken -- back when it was more affordable. Of course, you have to overlook the fact that, as Western Shoshone bumper stickers say of their homeland, "Newe Sogobia is not for sale." The price set was $26 million or 15 cents an acre, discount prices even for the 1870s. (With interest, the sum to be disbursed is now $145 million.)
Reasonably enough, the Western Shoshone point out that they never offered their land for sale and many of them refuse to take the money. The disbursement was made against their strenuous opposition. (Others believe that $30,000 per person is the best they'll ever get and are willing to settle up.) The case matters in part because Western Shoshone "traditionalists" have strenuously opposed mining, military operations -- 20% of all military-controlled land is in Nevada -- and nuclear activities on their land. Though environmentalists sometimes decry their cattle-grazing as destructive to the desert, they look like far better stewards of Nevada's arid lands than the federal government ever has been. They have deep roots in the past and are interested in the long-term future of the place. Then there's the simple matter of justice: the Western Shoshone are being stripped of their birthright and their rights just as surely as any Palestinian on the wrong side of Israel's Great Wall of Intolerance or the Iraqis whose resources have been redistributed to various American corporations.
The corporations reaping twenty-first century profits from the great Shoshone land grab and already engaged in a gold rush in the heartland of Shoshone territory aren't even American in most cases. An 1872 mining law allows virtually anyone to acquire public land for pennies in order to mine it; the Toronto-based Barrick Corporation, for instance, paid less than $10,000 for land containing an estimated $8 billion in gold. Unfortunately, we're not talking about the gold nuggets in pretty engravings of the Forty-Niners. Barrick and the other mega-corporations are mining microscopic gold, dispersed throughout the subterranean rock along the Carlin Trend in northeastern Nevada, enough gold to make the state the world's third most productive gold-mining region.
To get it, you dig up huge hunks of the landscape, pulverize them, and then run a cyanide solution through the resultant heaps, which pulls the gold out. It takes about a hundred tons of ore to produce an ounce of gold. Western Shoshone activist Carrie Dann (whose ranchlands and family cemetery have been ravaged by gold-mining) suggests that whenever Americans buy gold jewelry, they should get the slag that goes with it as well -- a splendid, many-ton toxic heap for a keepsake with every ring and ornament. It's toxic because grinding up the bedrock releases other heavy metals in the ground, which is why Nevada -- with less than 1% of the nation's population -- was, until a court changed the measurement standards in 2001, tops in the release of toxic substances. Its annual half-billion tons of toxics amounts to 10% of the nation's total, and a soaring 88.7% of its mercury releases; to say nothing of the applied cyanide, which at least is an organic compound that breaks down under the right circumstances. Mercury is forever.
Water Wars
The environmental price of gold is pretty high, and that's not even counting groundwater. But groundwater counts too. Much of the Carlin Trend gold is underneath the water table, so the mines pump out vast quantities of groundwater in this driest state in the union and discard it. They are, in other words, mining water as well as gold, and as recent attempts around the world to privatize water -- by Bechtel in Bolivia, for example -- demonstrate, pure water is getting more and more valuable. The elderly Western Shoshone activist and mystic Corbin Harney had a vision about water scarcity long ago and has made it a focus of his work ever since. In Nevada's gold-rush districts, water is being contaminated or dispersed into nearby waterways, where it will run away, never to return. According to Great Basin Mine Watch, Nevada mines wasted enough water in 2001 to serve a city of half a million people.
It takes thousands of years to recharge an aquifer. To drain one, or even drop the water table, creates "drawdown," the drying up of surface waters that would otherwise feed agriculture, rural communities, and wildlife. That's one of the reasons why environmentalists and rural citizens are up in arms about the latest plans to suck out the water under White Pine, Lincoln, and Nye counties, as well as rural Clark County for the benefit of urban Clark County (aka Las Vegas). This conflict is already being compared to the Los Angeles vs. Owens Valley water war immortalized in Roman Polanski's movie Chinatown. What Polanski's movie didn't show is the dry lake bed breeding dust storms, the habitat drying up, the ecological disaster Los Angeles lawns and carwashes demanded (and Mono Lake activists partially reversed in recent years).
Currently, Las Vegas gets most of its water from the Colorado River. In 1900, the city's population was in the single digits; it had only made it to about half-a-million when I started swinging through in the 1980s to protest the nuclear testing taking place 60 miles to the north; the city now has 1.4 million people, almost two-thirds of the state's population, and 5,000 new Vegans arrive every month -- which is why the entire Nevada congressional delegation is behind the water grab. That's where the votes are.
Even the usually environmentally respectable Senator Harry Reid is so behind the bill to start building the two-hundred-mile Lincoln-to-Vegas pipeline that he's threatening to attach it to some larger piece of legislation bound to pass. "They have enough water for the existing population," says Jan Gilbert, a longtime state activist. "They don't for this explosive growth."
Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, struck a different note when she said, "The notion that we have a finite supply of water, and when that finite supply is gone you stop growing, is in the past." Welcome to Nevada, driest state in the union, where water is infinite; you can wait until the late twentieth century to make things happen in the nineteenth century; gold is cheap; and the future is radioactively bright. Or was. Not all the news is bad.
Repealing the Apocalypse
Once again, it was the water that was the problem, only this time it wasn't a shortage. Yucca Mountain, it turned out, was all wet, and a truly lunatic place to put seventy-seven thousand tons of high-level nuclear waste.
The government created the nuclear power industry with a promise to reactor operators that the essential crisis of the industry, the dangerous, exceedingly long-lived waste it produces, would be taken off their hands. In all the subsequent decades of nuclear power production, spent fuel rods have been piling up in "cooling ponds" onsite, while the operators waited for the government to make good on its promise to get rid of the stuff (mostly located in the population-heavy, resource-light East). Three New England reactors are already suing the government for failing to come up with a dump.
For more than two decades, the Department of Energy (DOE) has done everything it can to create one of the most scientifically dubious dumpsites imaginable, at Yucca Mountain, about ninety miles north of Vegas on the northern edges of the Nevada Test Site, where all those nuclear bombs were detonated (and will be again if Bush has his way).
The initial plan was to compare sites in three western states and choose the safest one, but two of the states -- Texas and Washington -- had the political clout to get out of the competition. So the "comparative study" never studied anyplace but Yucca Mountain, and yet the longer it was studied the less suitable it seemed even for the mandated 10,000 years it was supposed to keep us and the waste apart (forget the quarter million years the stuff would actually remain dangerous). Somehow, this never seemed to stop plans from proceeding. For a lot of geologists, the fact that Yucca Mountain had, in geological terms, recent volcanic activity and has very contemporary seismic activity might be grounds enough for doubt. But the DOE officials just kept lowering the standards, fudging the facts, firing the dissenters, while spending nearly $100 billion to try to make it happen -- the cost of a nice, short foreign war these days.
Nevada itself has fine activists who have stood up to some of the atrocities, and the state itself has vociferously fought the federal plan to make it into what might have been the world's largest nuclear waste dump. And for now, this time, on this issue, they won, which is no mean feat. The Yucca Mountain plan was nicknamed early on the "Screw Nevada" bill, and the feckless plans to send the stuff across the country from the mostly eastern nuclear reactors is popularly known as "Mobile Chernobyl." (Click here to see how close the stuff gets to your house -- and within half a mile of fifty million other Americans.)
Easterners imagine that the Wiley Coyote landscape of Nevada means true inert dryness, and the New York Times has seldom been able to resist coupling the adjectives "sterile, empty, barren, and useless" to any description of the place. But underneath it is a surprisingly high water table that could rise further in a changed climate, and flowing through the mountain's billion fissures is rainfall which leaches out the chemicals in the rock, making a brew capable of eating through almost any metal, including pretty much every metal proposed for nuclear-waste containment.
Originally, the rock itself was supposed to isolate the stuff. When it turned out that wet Yucca Mountain was uniquely unsuited for the task, the idea was that the metal containers would isolate the waste. When it turned out that the leaching would eat them away, the plan switched to little titanium umbrellas on top of each cask -- so we'd gone from protection by the thick mantle of the earth to parasols in a couple of decades of study. And they call it science.
The state's Nuclear Projects Office (which means anti-dump) geologist, Steve Frischman, told me long ago that they picked 10,000 years as the period during which the waste must be isolated because you can at least pretend to estimate geological and climate changes over ten millennia; beyond that, it's the utter unknown -- Nevada could be a rainforest; its ancient lake beds could refill; and God knows who's going to look after the stuff then. The Western Shoshone? Among the more surreal aspects of the whole Yucca Project have been the many schemes to create warning labels for the waste that would make sense to unknown civilizations of the deep future.
But surprisingly, on July 9, two days after the Western Shoshone Disbursement Bill was signed by Bush, a federal appeals court ruled that the standards for Yucca Mountain were wrong: the Environmental Protection Agency should have accepted a ruling by the National Academy of Sciences that the safety standard should be not 10,000 years but the point of peak radiation -- which could be 300,000 years away, long after the metal containment casks have corroded into irrelevancy. Joe Egan, an attorney for the state of Nevada, told the Las Vegas Sun that this means "the department will have to apply a standard that all their own evidence says they can't meet."
This could mean the death of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, though the decision could also be appealed in the next few weeks and the Department of Energy is rushing to get the place licensed by December in what might be a last hurrah for the Bush Administration. Senator Kerry has taken a strong stand against Yucca (while Edwards, from nuke-plant intensive North Carolina, has waffled).
This is startlingly good news for Nevada. Scientists have always said that Yucca Mountain was a disaster-in-the-making, even leaving aside those 50 million Americans living within half a mile of the shipment routes the Yucca-bound nuclear waste would travel on for decades to come, or the 90 to 500 estimated accidents of unknown scale that statistics suggest would take place en route over the years. (Who needs terrorist dirty bombs when our own tax dollars can supply them?)
When you consider the human rights abuses, the squandering of resources for the benefit of the few, and the lunatic decisions being made for the long-term future of the state, the war in Iraq looks a little like a decoy from troubles at home, or a parallel universe with all the same ingredients. Except that there's almost no opposition to Nevada's impending catastrophes -- outside of Nevada. But you can bring back another perspective from Iraq too. One is that Goliath doesn't always win: the David of local activists and the Nevada State government has been fighting Yucca for decades, and this round Goliath lost. Another is that if you're tenacious enough, what looks like defeat can change, and the Western Shoshone have patience and commitment on their side.
Copyright C2004 Rebecca Solnit
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 11, 2004
Nuclear fuel costs repaid
Reactor operator gets $80 million for above-ground storage expenses
By Steve Tetreault
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The government has reached a settlement with the nation's largest nuclear plant operator, agreeing to pay Exelon Corp. for keeping used nuclear fuel at its power reactors until the radioactive material can be shipped to the Yucca Mountain repository.
Announcing the deal on Tuesday, Exelon said it will receive $80 million for costs already spent to install above-ground storage containers at three of its utility sites and for other alterations to expand waste capacities.
The company said it will continue to receive annual payments until the Energy Department takes ownership of spent fuel generated at 10 reactor locations and moves it to a repository it is working to develop at Yucca Mountain.
Assuming DOE meets a 2010 target for opening a Nevada repository, the reimbursements would total about $300 million, officials said.
Nevada officials began studying the deal for impacts to their campaign against the Yucca Mountain Project.
Joe Egan, the state's Virginia-based nuclear waste attorney, said at first blush the numbers suggest the Energy Department inflated the costs of on-site storage in a final environmental impact statement it issued two years ago. The study concluded it would be preferable to build a repository instead of keeping waste at reactor sites.
The state is laying groundwork for a new challenge to the environmental study. Egan said the state may cite the Exelon settlement to build an argument it could be economical to keep the nuclear waste on-site while exploring alternatives to a Nevada repository the Energy Department estimates will cost $58 billion.
Based on the settlement, Egan estimated it would cost $206 million a year to maintain on-site storage at the nation's 103 commercial reactors.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist if you take that (settlement) number and parlay it to all the nation's plants, you could get an annuity that is relatively small compared to the total cost of Yucca," he said. "This shows that there is absolutely no rush to do this the wrong way."
But Exelon officials said completion of the Yucca project is key to the settlement. The deal is open-ended; so if the repository is delayed, the company will continue to get paid and taxpayer costs will escalate.
"This agreement is not in any way, shape or form a substitute for permanent storage at Yucca Mountain," company spokesman Craig Nesbit said. "This is not what this is, and it cannot be taken that way."
For its part, Exelon will drop lawsuits charging DOE with breach of contract for failing to meet deadlines to open a repository and begin taking away its nuclear waste. Some 65 lawsuits have been filed against the department by utilities echoing the charge.
Angelina Howard of the Nuclear Energy Institute said the Exelon settlement is "hugely significant," because it will raise the profile of the Yucca Mountain Project among taxpayers.
"Taxpayers in every state, including those who do not receive electricity supplies from nuclear power plants, are now officially paying the costs of the government's failure to meet its obligations," Howard said.
Exelon operates the largest array of nuclear power plants in the United States, with 17 reactors at 10 utility sites.
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New York Times
August 11, 2004
U.S. Settles Nuclear Case Over Burial of Waste
By Matthew L. Wald
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 - The federal government promised on Tuesday to pay at least $300 million in damages to the Exelon Corporation, for its failure to accept nuclear waste for burial, in a settlement that implies a total cost to the Energy Department in the billions of dollars.
Exelon operates about one-sixth of the nation's nuclear reactors. Its predecessor companies, like the owners of all the power reactors in the United States, signed contracts with the Energy Department in the early 1980's agreeing to pay Washington one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour of power produced at the reactors; in return, the government promised to take their nuclear waste, beginning in 1998.
Exelon and 64 other companies have sued the Energy Department for failing to do so.
The government would pay the $300 million if the Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear repository begins accepting waste in 2010, as is now scheduled, but many experts think that if it opens at all, it will be much later. Under the settlement, if Yucca Mountain opens in 2015, the total will rise to $600 million.
The Energy Department wants Congress to reverse a decision made last month by an appeals court in Washington that threw out some of the rules under which Yucca was to have been licensed, saying they were too lax. The nuclear industry, which wants Yucca opened in part to help pave the way for a new generation of reactors, quickly asserted that the settlement should prompt the government to open Yucca as soon as possible.
Under Tuesday's agreement, Exelon will get $80 million immediately, for storage costs already incurred, and the rest of the money by 2010. The company now operates 17 reactors and has four more that are shut down.
But Brian J. O'Connell, director of the Nuclear Waste Program Office at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said that if the Exelon settlement formed a pattern for other companies, total damages would clearly run into billions of dollars. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the Energy Department said they had no estimate.
The initial payment will come from a Treasury Department fund for judgments, but the Treasury will recover the money from the Energy Department, Mr. O'Connell said. He predicted that Congress would appropriate the money or redirect it from other Energy Department programs.
The costs for the delay differ from reactor to reactor. Some plants, like Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee or Yankee Rowe in Western Massachusetts, have either been torn down or are being dismantled, and their fuel has been moved into dry casks. In those cases, the presence of the waste is the only reason for a guard force, and sometimes the only reason why the land where the reactors stood cannot be re-used.
In the case of Exelon's two reactors in Zion, Ill., which have been shut down, the fuel is still in the spent fuel pools inside the plant. That requires the continued operation of many mechanical systems that might otherwise have been shut down.
At other reactors, costs are mostly limited to the construction of dry casks, which are small steel and concrete silos with no moving parts, sitting on a concrete pad surrounded by barbed wire. As the years go by, at more and more sites the waste will have outlasted the reactors that produced it.
At the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association of reactor owners, Angelina Howard, a vice president, said in a statement that the settlement was "hugely significant."
"The agreement means that taxpayers in every state, including those who do not receive electricity supplies from nuclear power plants, are now officially paying the cost of the federal government's failure to meet its obligations," she said. "The government's willingness to enter into this settlement is the fair thing to do since it hasn't met its obligations to Exelon and the company's customers."
The nuclear utilities' payments to the Nuclear Waste Fund since 1983, plus interest, total $24 billion, she said.
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Chicago Daily Herald
Exelon to get money for waste storage
By Anna Marie Kukec
Daily Herald Business Writer
Exelon Corp., which owns Warrenville-based Exelon Nuclear, Tuesday settled with the federal government for roughly $300 million for reimbursement of the company's storage costs for used nuclear fuel.
The first payment of $80 million is expected in the next few weeks. Exelon then will be paid more annually as it incurs storage expenses until the federal government opens its nationwide nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The government's plan is already six years behind schedule but could open by 2010.
The Warrenville division oversees 17 working nuclear plants nationwide, including 11 in Illinois. Three of four non-operating nuclear plants also are in Illinois.
"The bottom line was the federal government was unable to fulfill its contract," said Exelon Nuclear spokesman Craig Nesbit.
That contract was part of the federal law called Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. It said the federal government would build a permanent nationwide disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel by 1998.
Spent nuclear fuel is radioactive uranium used in th