Yucca Mountain News Clips
Friday, January 18, 2008
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 17, 2008
CORRECTION -- 01/18/08 -- A headline written for a story about the Department of Energy's decision to no longer hold transport route hearings for the Yucca Mountain project implied that there were fiscal reasons for ending those meetings. The DOE said it had met all requirements for holding formal hearings.
Budget cuts Yucca transport hearings
Deadline past for formal comments on route
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
Although there've been plenty of hearings in Nevada on plans to build a repository at Yucca Mountain for disposing highly radioactive waste and the Department of Energy's vision for hauling it there on rail lines and roads, the odds of more formal hearings for people along transportation routes outside the state are slim to none.
That was the word Wednesday from Gary Lanthrum, DOE's director of logistics management for the Yucca Mountain Project, who discussed the issue after his presentation on transportation topics to an independent panel of scientists reviewing the project's work.
While there'll still be a chance to comment online as aspects of the transportation plan evolve and routes are designated a decade or more down the road, the hearing process and opportunity for submitting formal comments ended last week at the conclusion of the comment period for supplemental impact statements on the repository and plans for building a 319-mile railroad in east-central Nevada.
The national transportation plan, as described in a previous impact statement, will be open for comment "forever," Lanthrum said, "as work is accomplished."
"When routes are selected, that will get folded in," he said after his presentation in Las Vegas to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
"No additional hearings will be held," he said.
Part of the reason is that DOE has met all the requirements for holding formal hearings, even if none on the issue were held in numerous major metropolitan areas where trains and trucks hauling heavy casks of spent nuclear fuel could pass through on their way to the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Those hearings, 21 in all, were held in 1999 and 2000 to air the draft environmental impact statement for the planned repository. Nine were held in Nevada and 12 were held elsewhere in the nation, including large communities such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago, and smaller cities such as Boise, Idaho and Lone Pine, Calif.
Another reason for not holding any more formal hearings is because the danger of transporting nuclear waste is not greater, in fact less, in terms of accidents, than with trains and trucks hauling such hazardous materials as chlorine and propane, Lanthrum said. And hearings are not conducted, he said, when those materials are to be shipped through cities that are on the potential route for nuclear waste transportation.
Exceptions could occur, he said, when actual routes are designated. But until those routes are known there's no reason to put more hearings on DOE's agenda.
"When we select actual routes, if impacts are significantly different from what we analyzed, then we'll go back and do additional hearings," he said.
If that occurs, it won't happen for years. The nation's nuclear waste chief, Ward Sproat, told the board and a state legislative committee this week that the transportation program has been "taken off the critical path" in order to use that funding to keep the overall project afloat in the face of budget cuts.
Even with money diverted from the transportation effort to complete the repository's license application this year, Sproat said 500 employees will be laid off in waves.
The program staffs some 2,400 full-time positions, but funding cutbacks by Congress of $108 million from the 2008 budget this late in the fiscal year have left him no choice but to pursue layoffs.
The Bush administration requested $494.5 million for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Congress in December approved $386.5 million.
In the budget request, $104.3 million was supposed to be used to meet transportation milestones. Now, only $15 million is available for transportation after the budget cuts. The focus of using that money, Lanthrum said, "will be getting the EIS (environmental impact statement) done. That's my No. 1 priority," he said.
With the Energy Department scrambling from the effects of budget cuts, Nevada picked up its pace in opposing the multi-billion-dollar project. The Las Vegas City Council voted 6-0 on Wednesday to join the state in its legal battles against the Yucca Mountain Project.
The city and Nevada agreed to be jointly represented by the same counsel, Egan, Fitzpatrick and Malsch in common legal challenges regarding attempts by DOE to obtain a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate a repository at Yucca Mountain.
--Review-Journal writer Alan Choate contributed to this report. Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@ reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 17, 2008
Clinton declares Yucca Mountain 'will be off the table forever'
By Molly Ball
Review-Journal
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton put a national spotlight on Nevada's signature issue Wednesday, holding a discussion on Yucca Mountain before a full contingent of national media.
"When I am president, Yucca Mountain will be off the table forever," Clinton said.
The New York senator said the proposed nuclear waste repository, about 100 miles from Las Vegas, was a national issue, because spent fuel rods would be transported through many states. She criticized the Bush administration for continuing the project despite botched science.
"This is not just, 'We're in Nevada, so we'll talk about an issue Nevadans care about,' " she said. "This is an American issue."
Las Vegas-based transportation consultant Fred Dilger called Nevada just "the point of the spear." The waste would arrive in 10,000 shipments, many of them going through major cities like Chicago and Atlanta, Dilger said.
As the trains go through Las Vegas, "All of the casinos on the west side of Las Vegas Boulevard would be bathed in gamma radiation."
Railway accidents could have tragic consequences, or terrorists could target the shipments, Dilger said. "We will have solved the terrorists' problem for them if we implement this."
Clinton agreed, saying terrorists who want to detonate a "dirty bomb" in America no longer would have to find radioactive material and smuggle it into the country, as it would already be here and difficult to protect.
Clinton called the Yucca project part of a broader problem, saying, "The Bush administration has conducted a war on science across the board."
Saying the Energy Department is proceeding with submitting an application despite not having a finalized radiation standard, Clinton said, "If that doesn't make sense to you, that's because it doesn't make sense."
All the Democratic candidates for president have said they will stop Yucca Mountain; no Republican other than Rep. Ron Paul has ruled it out.
Yucca Mountain wasn't initiated by the Bush administration. The project proceeded while Bill Clinton was president.
When asked how both Clintons could claim to be consistent foes of the dump, the campaign released a statement saying: "President Clinton's veto blocked a Republican congressional mandate to begin storing waste at Yucca Mountain. His veto prevented a rush to judgment about Yucca Mountain."
Jabs at Clinton's rivals were part of Wednesday's conversation. Former Nevada Rep. Jim Bilbray was referring to Democratic candidate John Edwards when he said, "Some other people are telling you they've had an awakening. 'Yes, I voted for Yucca Mountain twice, but now I see it was wrong.' Senator Clinton didn't have to have an epiphany."
Edwards has said he changed his mind based on Yucca revelations after he left the Senate.
Clinton also took a potshot at Barack Obama when she said a president must be both a chief executive and a chief operating officer. Obama said recently he considers himself more visionary than bureaucrat.
"George Bush assured us he could run the government by surrounding himself with the best people, and look what happened," Clinton said. "Government by adviser just doesn't work."
Obama responded to a similar jab at Tuesday's debate. He said the Bush administration's problems could be traced to more serious problems, such as a lack of tolerance for dissent.
About 150 locals were at Wednesday's discussion.
Rick Van Diepen of the anti-nuclear group Citizen Alert voiced his view that nuclear energy isn't a good idea, partly because of the waste issue.
Clinton said, "I could not agree with you more," although she has said she would consider future expansion of nuclear power if problems including waste disposal were solved. She said she has put forth an energy plan that doesn't include more nuclear power.
--Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2919.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 17, 2008
ON THE ROAD: For physician's assistant, Yucca Mountain no problem, but health care is a big one
By Paul Harasim
Review-Journal
HAWTHORNE -- Death in New Jersey breathed life into this high-desert town five hours north of Las Vegas.
William Leaming, who manages the busy medical clinic in this city of 3,500, knows the story well. It is one he sometimes thinks about as the presidential caucuses near and candidates take stances on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
In 1926, Lake Denmark, N.J., was blown off the face of the Earth. An explosion at a Navy ammunition depot killed or maimed nearly 100 people and did almost $100 million in damage.
Congress, smarting from criticism about locating such a facility near a highly populated area, undertook a nationwide search for a site where collateral damage from another accident wouldn't be so extensive.
Hawthorne, a failing railroad town with a population hovering around 200, was chosen, becoming home to the Yucca Mountain Project of its time.
Today, the Hawthorne Army Depot covers 147,000 acres. Storage bunkers full of bombs, rockets and other explosives pimple the desert. American flags and patriotic artwork fashioned out of used weaponry are scattered throughout the town, which is the Mineral County seat.
Since 1930, a couple of minor explosions have been contained without the loss of life, just as government experts promised.
"It has worked out well," says Leaming. "The government did the necessary work to make it safe, and it is good for Hawthorne and it is good for the country. Without the depot, I don't know what Hawthorne would be. It's our biggest employer."
When Leaming heads to the presidential caucuses on Saturday, he will support Sen. Barack Obama for his stance on access to health care, not for his position against commissioning Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository.
"At some point when scientists study something so much and say danger is minimal, you have to believe them," the physicians assistant says.
"It makes more sense to have the waste stored at Yucca Mountain than just about anywhere else in the country. Yucca Mountain would be good for the country, just the way Hawthorne is."
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 17, 2008
ON THE ROAD: Indians' health care needs drive Paiute activist to get out the vote
By Paul Harasim
Review-Journal
SCHURZ -- When Elveda Martinez tells fellow members of her Walker River Paiute Tribe they deserve health care that's at least as good as the care received by federal prisoners, they listen.
Most also promise to participate in the upcoming presidential caucuses. Those who aren't registered to vote generally fill out the forms she always carries with her.
"The issue of health care is getting Indians involved in the political process like never before," the 48-year-old says before a mock caucus held by the neighboring Yerington Paiute Tribe.
American Indians have access to federally paid health care based on hundreds of treaties the United States signed with Indian nations. What Martinez finds unacceptable is that according to a 2003 study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the federal government's rate of spending on health care for Indians is 50 percent less than it is for prisoners or Medicaid recipients.
"It makes no sense that we would be better off in prison," Martinez says.
The raw physical beauty of Indian reservations -- the Walker Lake Indian Reservation is about 530 square miles of stark, rolling cattle range -- can make people forget that the health care needs of the tribes are serious, Martinez says.
Studies show that compared with the U.S. population as a whole, Indians have a 189 percent higher incidence of diabetes and a 600 percent higher incidence of tuberculosis.
Since October, Martinez has registered 98 new voters, bringing the total on the Walker River reservation to 426. Most are Democrats. Only 850 people live on the reservation. Martinez thinks she can persuade the remaining 15 eligible voters to "do the right thing."
"The health situation has become so challenging that I think the vast majority of people are going to caucus and vote," she says. "I know they don't trust the government to do right by Indians, but they have to try to change the government."
After she was laid off from her job as a water resource coordinator on the reservation, Martinez got involved with the Native American Network, a national organization working to get Indians more involved in the political process.
She has been proud of how members of her tribe have taken principled stands. She says she was on hand when tribal elders turned down $100 million from the Department of Energy, which wanted the right to transport nuclear waste through the reservation by rail. "We're not for the dangers of Yucca Mountain," she says.
Martinez says the tribe has turned down out of concern for the environment huge offers from mining companies to probe for rich ores.
"Now I want our people to take a stand for health care change," Martinez says.
Mary Stevens, a 71-year-old Paiute who was on hand for the mock caucus, is ready.
"I'm going to caucus for Barack Obama," she says. "He reminds me of John Kennedy. He has new ideas. He's listening to people. He'll be good for Indians."
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Las Vegas SUN
January 17, 2008
Democrats back to the battle
Unions, Clinton’s and Obama’s teams get into it
By J. Patrick Coolican, Michael Mishak
A day after a debate of mostly warm feelings and happy talk, the fight to win Nevada’s Democratic caucus turned intense again Wednesday, with the campaign of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton acting as the aggressor on many fronts.
A Clinton policy aide hosted a call to attack her chief opponent, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, on health care and Clinton backers pushed a story claiming that the Culinary Union intimidated its members to get them to support Obama, whom the union endorsed last week. The alleged victim of the one incident cited, however, later told the Sun the perceived pressure may have been a misunderstanding.
On the other side, the Culinary continued to mobilize on Obama’s behalf and has questioned whether a Clinton-affiliated rival union is abiding by campaign finance law. The 60,000-member Culinary Union attacked Clinton in fliers on immigration, the Iraq war and labor issues.
The renewed engagement between the two came just hours after Obama and Clinton conceded during the debate that their campaigns and supporters had been overzealous, especially on the issue of race. The candidates pledged to do better.
As their campaigns skirmished, the candidates themselves followed up Tuesday’s debate with Wednesday events to win over last minute fence–sitters before leaving for elsewhere.
Clinton focused on the proposed repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in a discussion with academics and activists at UNLV in the morning.
She reiterated her opposition to the nuclear waste site echoed by her Democratic rivals and tried to paint herself as the candidate with the strongest environmental record. She touted her plan to fund alternative energies, and blasted the Bush administration for sidelining scientific research that doesn’t support its political agenda.
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards arrived in Las Vegas from Reno on Wednesday, and was soon greeted by 70 union volunteers at the United Steel Worker’s Union hall in Henderson. He’s been endorsed by the union, which has 3,100 members in the state. Edwards held several events in the area, after drawing more than 1,000 people at his Reno rally.
Obama spoke at the Henderson Convention Center to several hundred supporters and undecideds, many of whom began lining up two hours early to get in. Obama took questions after his stump speech.
On health care, he said, “Both Clinton and Edwards have proposed good health care plans,” and either of them would be “a vast improvement over the system we have now.”
Obama returned to a theme of his campaign, that he is the wise conciliator who can bring warring parties together: “I respect that Sen. Clinton and President Clinton tried to get health care fixed in 1993. But they went about it the wrong way. They went behind closed doors and tried to do it themselves.”
Later, a Clinton aide attacked the Obama health plan as leaving out 15 million Americans because it includes no mandate that every person obtain health insurance.
The Obama camp has responded that Clinton hasn’t sufficiently laid out enforcement mechanisms that would give the mandate any teeth, and so it is meaningless. By not including an individual mandate, Obama backers say, his plan would have a better chance of passing a Congress wary of forcing Americans to buy something they don’t want.
A Clinton mailer accused Obama of favoring a big tax increase. The increase would be levied only on the wealthy and would be used to shore up the finances of Social Security, Obama countered.
Clinton backers weren’t the only ones making a forceful argument.
The Culinary sent out another tough flier. It accuses Clinton of taking money from union bete noire Station Casinos and of double talk on immigration, and notes her vote for the Iraq war authorization. The flier also accuses the Clinton campaign of attempting to block union members from voting.
The charge relates to a lawsuit filed by a group with Clinton ties that seeks to shut down special caucus sites on the Las Vegas Strip. The case goes before a judge today.
The plaintiffs, which include the teachers union, say the Strip caucus sites give disproportionate influence to the Culinary. Caucus rules allow anyone who works within 2.5 miles of the special sites union or nonunion to attend a caucus there.
The Culinary Union rolled out an aggressive field program months ago, promoting solidarity on caucus day, and has been dispatching its team of 200 organizers into the streets and into Strip casinos to lock down support for Obama.
Clinton is getting help from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
The union has split Nevada into 11 regions and deployed 125 paid employees in a member-to-member outreach effort, said Larry Scanlon, AFSCME’s national political director. It bused another 100 members into Nevada from California over the weekend to canvass and make phone calls. That effort, Scanlon said, was also aimed solely at members. By law, the union can advocate only to its members, not the public.
Culinary officials have questioned why AFSCME would need that many workers to reach just 3,000-some members here.
“I’m not going to worry about other people criticizing or questioning our program,” Scanlon said. “We’re going to work like hell to get our favorite candidate nominated and elected in November.”
AFSCME supports the at-large caucus lawsuit, and Scanlon said the union has been pushing the state Democratic Party to allow AFSCME members to act as election monitors at the Strip sites.
The New York Times reported Sunday that AFSCME planned to spend $214,000 money from its Political Action Committee and so can be spent freely on Nevada TV ads.
--Sun reporters Emily Richmond, Alexandra Berzon and Marshall Allen contributed to this story.
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Las Vegas SUN
January 17, 2008
Clinton attacks Yucca Mountain dump
By Alexandra Berzon
In the recent Reno Gazette-Journal poll the economy topped the list of issues Democratic voters in Nevada care most about, edging out health care and the Iraq war. The environment, meanwhile, was a distant forth. Yet the passion stirred by the mention of the nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain can never be totally discounted here.
So it was that Sen. Hillary Clinton found herself at UNLV Wednesday morning leading a discussion on the topic with academics and activists — all uniformly against the waste site.
“The process for evaluation and approval of Yucca Mountain was as flawed as the site itself,” said Clinton.”When I am president, Yucca Mountain will be off the table once and for all.”
That sentiment echoes the other Democrats in the race, who all say they oppose the waste site.
But Clinton tried today to portray herself as the candidate with the deepest environmental record and the longest record of opposing the waste site at Yucca Mountain. She also took the opportunity to tout her plan to fund alternative energies, and blasted the Bush administration for sidelining scientific research that doesn’t support its agenda.
“It’s imperative that the next president reestablish the integrity of scientific information,” said Clinton. “We are grownups in America. We can take it.”
Either way, the caucus this weekend is unlikely to hinge on the topic. But come November, expect Yucca Mountain to come up again and again, said Steven Parker, a political science professor at UNLV who was part of today’s conversation with Clinton.
“No matter who the Republicans field, they’ll probably be for the waste site, and no matter who the Democrats field they’ll be against it, so this will be a lot more important in November,” said Parker.
The Clinton campaign itself moved on pretty quickly. Even before the senator arrived at the Yucca Mountain talk, staff had handed out to press a briefing on Clinton’s economic stimulus proposals and a memo that said economic issues will be the focus of the campaign for the next few weeks. Clinton was in Reno this afternoon talking about the economy.
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Reno Gazette-Journal
January 17, 2008
Chelsea Clinton, 'Ugly Betty' stump in Reno
Kristin Larsen
Reno Gazette-Journal
During Chelsea Clinton’s first trip to Reno, she met with eight volunteers for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the intimate if noisy setting of Java Jungle Coffee Shop at 246 W. First St. on Wednesday morning.
The rumbling of the coffee grinder often drowned out the soft voice of young Clinton, who was accompanied by America Ferrara, star of the TV show “Ugly Betty.”
Hillary Clinton fans Mandy Albert, 19, her mother Betsy Albert, 44, and her grandmother Marie Groves, 68, were among the group invited to have a personal conversation with Chelsea Clinton and Ferrara.
In response to a question from Groves about putting nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Chelsea said her mom was looking into new sources of energy and was against the project as a whole.
“There’s too much seismic activity around Yucca Mountain,” Chelsea Clinton said. “Even though we have spent millions of dollars, we’ll just have to cut our losses at that site.”
Mandy and Betsy Albert had volunteered to work as ambassadors for Hillary Clinton by knocking on roughly 100 doors in their neighborhood to get out the vote and encourage people to vote for their candidate. Clinton asked about their efforts to get out the vote.
“So far the response has been very positive. Most people say they are going to attend the caucus,” Betsy Albert said.
“I feel that your mom has been definitely been criticized the most,” Mandy Albert said to Chelsea Clinton. “I’ve found that it’s harder to stand up for her because everyone’s excited about (Barack) Obama because he’s the new kid on the block. It helps me that I know more about your mom so there will be less surprises.”
Groves, 68, a self-described politically “junkie,” switched from being a registered Republican to a Democrat just to vote for Hillary Clinton.
“I want to tell her to keep working on health care, it’s one of the most important things in this country especially if you don’t have it,” Grove said.
“I’m really proud of my mom; she tried to get universal health care in '93 and '94,”
Clinton said. “Health care costs have more than doubled.”
Mandy Albert said she’s been delighted by the election process. “I’m so excited, especially since this is the first time I get to participate,” she said. “For so long Nevada has been the forgotten state and now we’re in the forefront and that’s really exciting."
Before she left to attend a lunch at the Chocolate Bar on Arlington Street, Chelsea Clinton said, “Thanks for supporting my mom.”
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Grist Magazine
January 17, 2008
Hear You Loud and Nuclear
Hillary Clinton brings an environmental issue to the fore in Nevada
Hillary Clinton is taking pains to make sure all Nevadans know her views on -- gasp! -- an environmental issue: She would stop plans to store nuclear waste at the state's Yucca Mountain repository. "This is not just, 'We're in Nevada, so we'll talk about an issue Nevadans care about,'" Clinton assured voters. "This is an American issue." Yucca Mountain was discussed in Nevada's recent Democratic debate; Clinton is running a radio ad in the state telling listeners that Barack Obama, who has also pledged to close Yucca Mountain, is less committed to closing the site than she is. In response, long-time anti-Yucca activist and Obama supporter Bob Fulkerson tells reporters that it is "completely ludicrous and disingenuous to suggest that Barack Obama has somehow been soft on Yucca Mountain."
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Grist Magazine
January 17, 2008
Comin' Round the Mountain
Leading Dem candidates talk nuclear power at Nevada debate
The three leading Democratic presidential candidates came together in Nevada last night for yet another debate. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama all wooed Nevada voters by voicing opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository, with Edwards taking his opposition a step further and coming out against all new nuclear construction. The highest drama came before the debate: candidate Dennis Kucinich had been invited to participate, but the invitation was withdrawn after his poor showing in New Hampshire and Iowa. Kucinich sued, a judge found in his favor, and the case was appealed to the state Supreme Court -- which re-excluded Kucinich from the debate just before it was to begin.
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Grist Magazine
January 17, 2008
Coal is the enemy of the human race: Edwards in the debate edition
Edwards puts the coal issue into the Dem debate
by David Roberts
Below the fold, I've put the entire portion of the transcript from last night's Dem debate that deals with climate and energy. It is to the candidates' credit that they took a narrow, stupid question about Yucca Mountain and managed to expand it into a discussion of energy.
JMG scolded me for not giving kudos to John Edwards for bringing up the fact that coal is the enemy of the human race. And rightly so: he deserves kudos. This is what he said:
I believe we need a moratorium on the building of any more coal-fired power plants unless and until we have the ability to capture and sequester the carbon in the ground. Because every time we build a new coal-fired power plant in America when we don't have that technology attached to it, what happens is, we're making a terrible situation worse.
To his great credit, he pushed this onto the table, and to their shame, both Clinton and Obama dodged. Now, from the pure text, it looks like Edwards' position has gotten considerably stronger -- remember, as we've discussed at length, he used to call for a moratorium on coal plants that aren't compatible with sequestration, which is quite different from banning coal plants without actually existing sequestration. I suspect that he just isn't being careful with his language, and his position is the same. Either way, good on him for bringing it up.
(And good for Obama for pushing efficiency into the mix.)
Here's the whole thing:
WILLIAMS: We have to, at this point, turn a bit more local.
And let's talk for a moment about Yucca Mountain.
As sure as there's somebody at a roulette table not far from here convinced that they're one bet away from winning it all back, every person who comes here running for president promises to end the notion of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.
And the people of Nevada have found it's easier to promise to end it than it is to end it.
Anyone willing to pledge here tonight, beginning with you Senator Obama, to kill the notion of Yucca Mountain?
OBAMA: I will end the notion of Yucca Mountain because it has not been based on the sort of sound science that can assure the people in Nevada that they're going to be safe. And that, I think, was a mistake.
Now, you hate to see billions of dollars having already been spent on a mistake, but what I don't want to do is spend additional billions of dollars and potentially create a situation that is not safe for the people of Nevada. So I've already -- I've been clear from the start that Yucca, I think, was a misconceived project. We are going to have to figure out how are we storing nuclear waste.
And what I want to do is to get the best experts around the table and make a determination: What are our options based on the best science available? And I think there's a solution that can be had that's good for the country but also good for the people of Nevada.
WILLIAMS: Thirty seconds each, Senators Clinton and Edwards.
CLINTON: Well, I voted against Yucca Mountain in 2001. I have been consistently against Yucca Mountain. I held a hearing in the Environment Committee, the first that we've had in some time, looking at all the reasons why Yucca Mountain is not workable. The science does not support it. We do have to figure out what to do with nuclear waste.
You know, Barack has one of his biggest supporters in terms of funding, the Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC) , which has spent millions of dollars trying to make Yucca Mountain the waste depository. John was in favor of it twice when he voted to override President Clinton's veto and then voted for it again.
I have consistently and persistently been against Yucca Mountain, and I will make sure it does not come into effect when I'm president.
WILLIAMS: Your rebuttal to the...
OBAMA: Well, I think it's a testimony to my commitment and opposition to Yucca Mountain that despite the fact that my state has more nuclear power plants than any other state in the country, I've never supported Yucca Mountain. So I just want to make that clear.
WILLIAMS: Senator Edwards?
EDWARDS: Well, I'm opposed to Yucca Mountain. I will end it for all the reasons that have already been discussed, because of the science that's been discovered, because apparently some forgery of documents that's also been discovered -- all of which has happened in recent years.
But I want to go to one other subject on which the three of us differ. And that is the issue of nuclear power.
I've heard Senator Obama say he's open to the possibility of additional nuclear power plants. Senator Clinton said at a debate earlier, standing beside me, that she was agnostic on the subject.
I am not for it or agnostic. I am against building more nuclear power plants, because I do not think we have a safe way to dispose of the waste. I think they're dangerous, they're great terrorist targets and they're extraordinarily expensive.
They are not, in my judgment, the way to green this -- to get us off our dependence on oil.
WILLIAMS: Tim Russert?
CLINTON: Well, John, you did vote for Yucca Mountain twice, and you didn't respond to that part of the question.
EDWARDS: I did respond to it. I said the science that has been revealed since that time and the forged documents that have been revealed since that time have made it very -- this has been for years, Hillary. This didn't start last year or three years ago. I've said this for years now -- have revealed that this thing does not make sense, is not good for the people of Nevada, and it's not good for America.
Which, by the way, is also why I am opposed to building more nuclear power plants.
RUSSERT: I want to pick up on that.
Senator Obama, a difference in this campaign: You voted for the energy bill in July of 2005; Senator Clinton voted against it.
That energy bill was described by numerous publications, quote, "The big winner: nuclear power." The secretary of energy said this would begin a nuclear renaissance.
We haven't built a nuclear power plant in this country for 30 years. There are now 17 companies that are planning to build 29 plants based on many of the protections that were provided in that bill, and incentives for licensee construction operating cost.
Did you realize, when you were voting for that energy bill, that it was going to create such a renaissance of nuclear power?
OBAMA: Well, the reason I voted for it was because it was the single largest investment in clean energy -- solar, wind, biodiesel -- that we had ever seen. And I think it is -- we talked about this earlier -- if we are going to deal with our dependence on foreign oil, then we're going to have to ramp up how we're producing energy here in the United States.
Now, with respect to nuclear energy, what I have said is that if we could figure out a way to provide a cost-efficient, safe way to produce nuclear energy, and we knew how to store it effectively, then we should pursue it because what we don't want is to produce more greenhouse gases. And I believe that climate change is one of the top priorities that the next president has to pursue.
Now, if we cannot solve those problem, then absolutely, John, we shouldn't build more plants. But part of what I want to do is to create a menu of energy options, and let's see where the science and the technology and the entrepreneurship of the American people take us.
That's why I want to set up a cap and trade system. We're going to cap greenhouse gases. We're going to say to every polluter that's sending greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, "We're going to charge you a dollar -- we're going to charge you money for every unit of greenhouse gas that you send out there." That will create a market. It will generate billions of dollars that we can invest in clean technology.
And if nuclear energy can't meet the rigors of the marketplace -- if it's not efficient and if we don't solve those problems -- then that's off the table. And I hope that we can find an energy mix that's going to deliver us from the kinds of problems that we have right now.
RUSSERT: Senator Clinton?
CLINTON: Well, Tim, I think it's well accepted that the 2005 energy bill was the Dick Cheney lobbyist energy bill. It was written by lobbyists. It was championed by Dick Cheney. It wasn't just the green light that it gave to more nuclear power. It had enormous giveaways to the oil and gas industries.
It was the wrong policy for America. It was so heavily tilted toward the special interests that many of us, at the time, said, you know, that's not going to move us on the path we need, which is toward clean, renewable green energy.
I think that we have to, you know, break the lock of the special interests. That's why I've proposed a strategic energy fund, $50 billion to invest in clean, renewable energy.
How would I do that? Take the tax subsidies that were given in the 2005 that Dick Cheney wrote; take them away from the gas and oil industry. They don't need our tax dollars to make these enormous profits.
Let's put to work the money that we should get from the oil and gas industry, in terms of windfall profits taxes, so that we can begin to really put big dollars behind this shift toward clean, renewable, green energy.
It's not going to happen by hoping for it. And these small, you know, pieces of puzzle that are starting to take shape around the country are not sufficient for us to break our addiction to foreign oil.
So that 2005 energy bill was big step backwards on the path to clean, renewable energy. That's why I voted against it. That's why I'm standing for the proposition -- let's take away the giveaways that were given to gas and oil, put them to work on solar and wind and geothermal and biofuels and all the rest that we need for a new energy future.
RUSSERT: Senator Edwards, you say you're against nuclear power.
But a reality check: I talked to the folks at the MIT Energy Initiative, and they put it this way, that in 2050, the world's population is going to go from six billion to nine billion, that CO2 is going to double, that you could build a nuclear power plant one per week and it wouldn't meet the world's needs.
Something must be done, and it cannot be done just with wind or solar.
EDWARDS: Well, yes, there are a lot of things that need to be done.
If you were to double the number of nuclear power plants on the planet tomorrow -- if that were possible -- it would deal with about one-seventh of the greenhouse gas problem. This is not the answer.
It goes beyond wind and solar. We ought to be investing in cellulose-based biofuels. There are a whole range of things that we ought to be investing in and focusing on.
I want to come back to something Senator Clinton said a minute ago. I agree with her and Senator Obama that it's very important to break this iron grip that the gas and oil industry has on our energy policy in this country.
But I believe, Senator Clinton, you've raised more money from those people than any candidate, Democrat or Republican. I think we have to be able to take those people on if we're going to actually change our policy.
Now, what we need in my judgment is we need a cap on carbon emissions. That cap needs to come down every year. We need an 80 percent reduction in our carbon emissions by the year 2050. Below the cap, we ought to make the polluters pay.
That money ought to be invested in all these clean renewable sources of energy: wind, solar, cellulose-based biofuels. As I said earlier, I'm opposed to building more nuclear power plants.
But I'd go another step that at least I haven't heard these two candidates talk about. They can answer for themselves. I believe we need a moratorium on the building of any more coal-fired power plants unless and until we have the ability to capture and sequester the carbon in the ground.
Because every time we build a new coal-fired power plant in America when we don't have that technology attached to it, what happens is, we're making a terrible situation worse. We're already the worst polluter on the planet. America needs to be leading by example.
WILLIAMS: Rebuttal time to both senators, 30 seconds, please. Senator Clinton.
CLINTON: Well, I have a comprehensive energy plan that I have put forth. It does not rely on nuclear power for all of the reasons that we've discussed. I have said we should not be siting any more coal-powered plants unless they can have the most modern, clean technology. And I want big demonstration projects to figure out how we would capture and sequester carbon.
But you know, this is going to take a massive effort. This should be our Apollo moon shot.
This is where a president needs to come in and say, "We can do this, America. You know, we can make this change." We've got to do it by having a partnership with what needs to happen in Washington, but there's work for everybody to do -- the states, communities and individuals.
That's what I want to summon the country to achieve, and I think we can make it.
WILLIAMS: Senator Obama?
OBAMA: Well, I think that one thing that we haven't talked as much about that we need to is reducing the consumption of energy. We are inefficient, and oftentimes during the presidential campaign, people have asked, what do we expect out of the American people in bringing about real change.
This is an example of where ordinary citizens have to make a change. We are going to have to make our buildings more efficient. We're going to have to make our lighting more efficient. We're going to have to make our appliances more efficient. That is actually the low-hanging fruit if we're going to deal with climate change. That's the thing that we can do most rapidly.
And there's no reason why, with the kind of presidential leadership that I intend to provide, that we can't make drastic cuts in the amount of energy that we consume without any drop in our standard of living.
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Los Angeles Times
January 17, 2008
Democrats most obliging in their bid for Nevada
Clinton, Obama blame their recent racial flare-up on over-eager supporters. The three take a stand against the Yucca waste dump.
Cathleen Decker and Peter Nicholas
LAS VEGAS -- The three leading Democratic candidates for president tussled Tuesday over a proposed nuclear waste dump, energy policy and gun use in a restrained debate that explored issues key to voters who will caucus here Saturday.
After a week spent in testy exchanges on the subject of race, the candidates went out of their way to be deferential, opening the debate with a series of acknowledgments in which all agreed that the others were caring candidates supportive of civil rights.
The contenders -- New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards -- spent much of their time critiquing the Bush administration's policies.
But they did probe differences.
After moderator Brian Williams, the "NBC Nightly News" anchor, asked for their views on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, Obama vowed to "end the notion" of using the rural Nevada site to deposit nuclear waste.
"I've been clear from the start that Yucca, I think, was a misconceived project," he said.
But Clinton quickly cited her vote against the proposal in 2001. She noted that one of Obama's key supporters had tried to push the project. And she pointed out that Edwards had twice voted in favor of the nuclear site.
"I have consistently and persistently been against Yucca Mountain, and I will make sure it does not come into effect when I'm president," she said.
Edwards, for his part, criticized past statements by Obama that he would be open to the construction of nuclear plants, and by Clinton that she was "agnostic" on the subject.
"I am not for it or agnostic," Edwards said. "I am against building more nuclear power plants, because I do not think we have a safe way to dispose of the waste."
The candidates also skirmished over the 2005 energy bill. Signed by President Bush, it was the first national energy legislation in more than a decade. Obama said he supported it as a way to spur the development of alternative energy sources.
"If we are going to deal with our dependence on foreign oil, then we're going to have to ramp up how we're producing energy here in the United States," the Illinois senator said.
Clinton called the bill a giveaway to the energy industry that had been concocted by Vice President Dick Cheney.
"It was the wrong policy for America," she said. "It was so heavily tilted toward the special interests that many of us, at the time, said, 'You know, that's not going to move us on the path we need.' "
As it had been in the discussion of Yucca Mountain, the location of the debate was apparent when the subject of guns arose.
Questioner Tim Russert, the moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," asked Clinton whether she had backed off a promise made in her Senate race in 2000 to include every handgun sale in a national registry.
Perhaps mindful that more than 1 in 3 Nevada households contains a firearm, Clinton said she was a "political realist" on the issue. She did not acknowledge that she had recanted the promise though, until Russert asked her again. "Yes," she said.
Obama agreed that a national registry was impossible politically, and he promised to help law enforcement around what he said was a blockade by the National Rifle Assn. on legislation to track down unscrupulous gun dealers.
"It is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot," he said. "And then you've got the reality of 34 Chicago public school students who get shot down on the streets of Chicago."
Edwards cited his own rural upbringing and defended the 2nd Amendment. But, he said, "I don't believe that means you need an AK-47 to hunt."
The relative calm of the proceedings belied the drama that preceded the event. Just before MSNBC began airing it, the state Supreme Court overturned a lower court order that challenger Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio be included.
The lower court judge had ruled that an initial invitation to Kucinich served as a binding contract. MSNBC, the debate sponsor, said that it rescinded its invitation because of Kucinich's poor showing in the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses.
For the Democrats, the Nevada caucuses on Saturday are a hoped-for springboard to the Jan. 26 South Carolina primary and to the blockbuster grouping on Feb. 5 of more than 20 states, including California.
Throughout the debate, Clinton in particular returned often to Nevada and its concerns. But the debate itself centered initially not on the state or western issues but on the race controversy that enveloped the campaign in recent days.
Clinton and Obama called a truce on Monday, and that held during the Tuesday debate. Asked at the beginning of the debate about a supporter's insinuation about youthful drug use by Obama, Clinton blamed the dust-up on "exuberant and sometimes uncontrollable supporters."
She later declined to address Russert's reminder that she had once promised to rid her campaign of anyone making such comments.
Obama, too, was taken to task for his campaign's role in spreading the comments to reporters. He blamed "overzealous" aides and said that he believed all of the candidates were "committed to racial equality."
Pocketbook issues took up much of the debate, also sponsored by the state Democratic Party and groups representing African American and Latino interests.
Each candidate detailed economic plans and expressed sympathy for those caught in the nation's mortgage meltdown. Clinton and Edwards said they regretted voting in 2001 for a bill that would have made it tougher for people to erase personal debt through bankruptcy.
Edwards said he "absolutely" regretted his vote. Although she voted for the bill, Clinton said she was pleased that it failed.
"It was a bill that had some things I agreed with and other things I didn't agree with, and I was happy that it never became law," she said.
--cathleen.decker@latimes.com
--peter.nicholas@latimes.com
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MSNBC
January 17, 2008
Obama Camp Pushes Back on Yucca
From NBC/NJ’s Aswini Anburajan
In a conference call, the Obama campaign pushed back on attack ads by the Clinton campaign that questioned the candidate’s opposition to Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump, a designation most state residents strongly oppose.
Nevada State Sen. Steven Horsford called the attacks "text-book Washington politics" and promised that Obama's campaign would vigorously respond to any attacks made against Obama and his record on nuclear power.
The ad by the Clinton campaign accused Obama of having close ties to the nuclear power industry.
"And Barack Obama? The Las Vegas Review Journal said Obama was -- quote "hip deep in financial ties" to one of America's biggest Yucca mountain promoters... nuclear giant Exelon," the ad says.
According to a release by the Clinton campaign, Exelon employees have donated over $269,100 to Obama's federal campaigns and over $194,750 in 2008. Exelon has spent millions of dollars on lobbying the federal government on nuclear waste management.
However, Bob Fullerson, the former director of Citizen Alert which helped turn Nevada into an anti-dumping state for nuclear waste, claimed the attacks on Obama's record were unfair.
"It's completely ludicrous and disingenuous to say that he is soft on Yucca Mountain," Fullerson said on the conference call.
But Obama does support the expansion of nuclear power plants, if there is better technology to handle nuclear waste. He was the only candidate to take that position at the Democratic debate this past Tuesday in Las Vegas. The issue of nuclear waste and power is a prickly one for the candidate, since Illinois is one of the largest generators of nuclear waste in the country.
Obama's campaign released a fact sheet today quoting Obama saying that he believes every state should handle their own nuclear waste, rather than shipping it outside their own borders. Obama also joined fellow Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin in writing a letter in 2006 to Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) that said no regional nuclear waste sites should be created without local populations having veto power over the site.
Horsford said the Obama campaign would respond to the attack by Clinton, but wasn't able to expand on how the campaign planned to respond -- whether it be through direct mail, radio or television ads.
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Scripps News
January 17, 2008
Dems storm Nevada
Rivals push hard as caucus plays bigger role
By Kevin Yamamura
CARSON CITY, Nev. – California may pride itself on dominating political attention in the West, but the nation's most populous state (pop. 36.4 million) for now has taken a back seat to Nevada, its oft-ignored neighbor to the east (pop. 2.5 million).
Nevada's caucus on Saturday looms as the Democratic Party's third major test, and the state will play a rare early role in shaping the nomination after scheduling a January caucus for the first time.
Hundreds of California volunteers are heading to Nevada to knock on doors, call voters and explain procedures for a caucus they will never participate in. Though Californians already are voting by mail, volunteers said the real action is in Fallon and Carson City, not Sacramento or San Francisco.
"I didn't see the need in California," said Alex Chavez, 22, a Mountain View resident who has knocked on doors in Reno for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama since Saturday. "I didn't see a lot of publicity. I feel like this is a decision-maker in Nevada."
Before this year, Nevada was much like California used to be, a state that merely validated the presidential choices of residents in places such as New Hampshire and Iowa. A state where candidates never ran television commercials or stopped to say hello.
Those days are over.
Hundreds of people bundled in fleeces and gloves waited two hours in near-freezing temperatures Monday at the Carson City Community Center to hear Obama. A similar scene played out Sunday in nearby Minden, where former President Clinton packed a small town hall to stump for his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The state could have between 40,000 and 60,000 Democratic voters turn out for its caucus Saturday, far more than the 9,000 who voted in the 2004 caucus, said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Though the state has nearly as many registered Republicans as Democrats, the GOP race has drawn less attention because its candidates have focused instead on South Carolina. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney have spent the most time in Nevada among GOP hopefuls – Paul visited Monday and Romney will arrive today – but neither has spent as much as their Democratic counterparts.
Damore said Republicans are more focused on South Carolina because religious-based conservative messages play better among voters there and the Nevada Republican Party did not settle on a caucus date early enough. He also noted that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., influenced Democratic candidates to make Nevada a priority.
Those candidates are making two or three stops a day in Las Vegas and Reno, as well as in outposts such as Elko and Fallon, hoping to encourage Nevadans to spend Saturday morning caucusing on their behalf.
A Reno Gazette-Journal poll conducted Jan. 11-13 showed 32 percent of voters support Obama, compared with 30 percent for Clinton and 27 percent for former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who began touring the state Wednesday.
Volunteers say face-to-face contact is even more crucial in a caucus state such as Nevada, where voters have to participate in a selection process that could last an hour rather than five minutes in a voting booth or at home with a mail ballot.
"It's moving at a much faster pace here," said Phillip Raffle, a 22-year-old student from Kentfield who has gone door to door for Clinton. "Nevada is on the caucus system, so getting people to turn out is different from the vote system in California. You have to remind people that we depend on them showing up."
All three major Democratic campaigns said carloads of volunteers are streaming into their Nevada offices from California this week. Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, is organizing two buses of volunteers that will head to Reno and Las Vegas to knock on doors for Clinton starting today.
The Democratic campaigns have relied heavily on support from unions, some of which have brought in members from California and elsewhere. Obama received the biggest endorsement prize – backing from the state's Culinary Workers Union, which represents casino employees.
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Washington Times
January 17, 2008
Hillary raises Yucca issue in Nevada
By Christina Bellantoni
LAS VEGAS — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is campaigning through Nevada with a laserlike focus on local issues — holding small forums with voters about economic woes and the Yucca Mountain.
During her roundtable yesterday on the nuclear waste site here, panelists praised the New York Democrat for the work her husband's administration did with Yucca, and applauded her saying the toxic waste also is a homeland security problem.
"It's an issue that concerns every American," she said. Later, Mrs. Clinton told reporters, "I think we need to go back and start over. We should not be guided by politics, we should be guided by science. We have a serious problem, how are we going to handle it."
While Sen. Barack Obama drew big crowds in nearby Henderson, Mrs. Clinton offered her Yucca Mountain policy roundtable with nine Nevada panelists before an audience of fewer than 200 people.
"Thanks very much for being here and doing this," gushed Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.
Another panelist, a nuclear waste consultant, said Americans don't realize that moving the waste across the country would mean residents in Atlanta, St. Louis and elsewhere would be "bathed in this radiation."
Mrs. Clinton nodded and lamented the concern over the dangers of transporting the waste.
"It's not only the fear of an accident," she said. "One of the big challenges facing terrorists who are trying to get a hold of radioactive material is getting enough of it ... if we have this much movement of this much radioactive material, it's already inside the United States."
The government first studied Yucca Mountain, located 90 miles from Las Vegas, as a potential site for storing nuclear waste three decades ago. President Bush in 2002 approved a measure to clear the way to open the repository in 2017. There is now about 50,000 tons of the solid, ceramiclike material stored at nuclear power plants across the nation, and 2,000 more tons of material is produced every year.
Environmental groups and many Democrats have vowed to block the site's opening, and now politicians are scrambling to come up with another solution for storing the radioactive material. The Clinton administration opposed the site and delayed its opening for years, including vetoing a bill in 2000 to start temporarily storing waste at Yucca. Most Nevadans oppose the site.
Mr. Obama, of Illinois, yesterday told voters Mrs. Clinton was misleading them with a Nevada mailer that accuses him of having a "plan with a trillion dollar tax increase on America's hard-working families" by making changes to Social Security.
"Nevada families need to keep more of their hard-earned dollars, not less," read the mailer, paid for by the Clinton campaign. Under a photo of Mr. Obama, the mailer states that he wants to "send more of Nevada families' hard-earned dollars to Washington."
Mr. Obama has told voters he would deal with the "long-term problem" of a system soon to be overburdened by 78 million retiring baby boomers by raising the cap on the payroll tax, which is levied only on the first $97,000 of income. He said that 97 percent of Nevada residents earn less than that cap.
People making more than $200,000 or $250,000 "can afford to pay a little more on payroll tax," he said. "Maybe she thinks the top 3 percent of the population is average, middle-class America. It is not."
Mrs. Clinton defended the mailer, saying his plan to raise the cap on the payroll tax amounts to the tax increase, and giving examples of workers who would be hit by his plan.
"It doesn't just fall on the wealthiest of Americans," she said. "You can find people here in Las Vegas who would be affected."
She cited a North Las Vegas police captain, a school superintendent and public service workers living in "high wage and high cost areas" such as New York.
"They would see their taxes go up two, three thousand dollars," she said. "I think there are better approaches to solving the long-term challenges that we face in Social Security."
Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina said last night the mailer sounded like the "politics of scare tactics," and he blasted Mrs. Clinton for not taking a stand on Social Security.
"I have sat beside her in so many forums and debates now. ... I've heard her answer the question 30 times, and I have no idea what she would do," he said at a carpenters union hall here.
"She says she's not going to cut benefits, she"s not going to raise the retirement age and she won"t raise taxes. Well, I'm sorry, those are the options. She's just not willing to take a position."
Mr. Edwards says he would change the payroll tax to target people earning more than $200,000.
The Clinton campaign also leveled charges that Mr. Obama's newest television ad saying he would pass universal health care is dishonest since his plan does not mandate insurance coverage as hers does.
A Nevada pediatrician argued that Mr. Obama's claim "is really not accurate" and lauded Mrs. Clinton's plan as "truly universal."
Mr. Obama has told voters the difference in their plans is minimal and says his plan makes health care more affordable.
Also yesterday, the Democratic National Committee intervened in a lawsuit that threatened the state party's established rules for Saturday's caucus. A federal court will hear the case today and decide whether casino workers can participate in the caucus via at-large precincts set up along the Las Vegas Strip.
The nine at-large sites were approved by the state party in March and ratified by the DNC last fall, but a teachers union and several Democrats sued to shut them down, arguing they would allocate too many delegates and discount delegates from more rural areas.
Some Obama supporters think the lawsuit was only brought to try and diminish the influence of his endorsement from the culinary workers union, which boasts thousands of strip workers as members.
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Yahoo! News
January 17, 2008
Opinion
Atomic power regains its glow
More than two decades after the Chernobyl meltdown, the world again is staring uneasily at the Janus faces of nuclear power. One offers an energy source that won't cause global warming. The other presents challenges in cost, safety, disposal, and nuclear proliferation.
Rising energy prices, and especially the need to find alternatives to fossil fuels that pour out greenhouse gases, have put a fresh focus on nuclear power. "We are facing a nuclear renaissance," the head of a French nuclear energy company said recently. "Nuclear's not the devil anymore. The devil is coal."
Today the world's 439 nuclear plants provide about 16 percent of electricity, a percentage that has altered little over 20 years. But that's changing.
Britain recently announced that it will look favorably on companies that apply to build new nuclear plants there. Finland and France already have active building programs. Italy, which banned nuclear plants after Chernobyl, is now engaged in a debate on the subject, and interest in the US appears to be reawakening, too. In all, more than 100 new plants are being built or planned, about half of them in developing nations such as India and China.
This nascent boom comes despite the known shortcomings of nuclear power. Radioactive waste from nuclear plants, such as plutonium-239, can remain toxic for thousands of years. And no permanent storage facility to keep it safely sequestered indefinitely has been built anywhere in the world. The American site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has proceeded at a snail's pace and is opposed by that state's most influential politician, US Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D). Its opening remains at least a decade away.
Plant accidents remain a real concern, too, especially in developing countries where official corruption can go unchecked and safety standards and public accountability may be lacking. Reactors are tempting targets for terrorist attacks. And they have the potential to produce weapons-grade plutonium, another obvious concern.
Together, these considerations provide ample reason to give pause.
But the time for weighing alternatives is running out. Unabated building of coal-fired power plants would produce a level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that could usher in unacceptable changes to the world's climate. Technologies that could capture carbon emissions from coal plants and bury them underground are only in their experimental stages.
Some environmentalists argue that turning to nuclear power could siphon off government support for other fossil-fuel alternatives – wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and so on.
That shouldn't be allowed to happen. Neither should it stunt initiatives to cut energy use through conservation and more efficient products. Ramping up efforts on these preferable alternatives can keep the building of new nuclear plants to a minimum.
Governments must take a gimlet-eyed look at nuclear power. They must insist that operators have strong safety plans and adequate funding for the entire life cycle of facilities, from construction to proper decommissioning and storage of hazardous waste.
Nuclear power is a friend that bears close watching.
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ASU News
January 17, 2008
Mossman called to join nuclear panel
Kenneth Mossman, an ASU professor of health physics and an international expert in radiation health and safety, has been named to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP) of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The panel is an independent, trial-level adjudicatory body of the NRC.
The panel, acting on behalf of the NRC, conducts hearings and makes decisions with respect to granting, suspending, revoking, or amending licenses authorized by the Atomic Energy Act., The panel hears cases on licensing and enforcement regarding nuclear reactors and civilian use of nuclear materials in the United States. It considers issues concerning the operation of the nation’s more than 100 nuclear power plants and programs related to about 5,000 nuclear materials licenses.
In recent years, the panel’s hearings have shifted to focus on license extensions, site decontamination, enforcement actions, reactor and materials license amendments, and spent fuel storage.
“Nuclear industry activities generate some of the most challenging questions that face the government,” Mossman says. “The questions raised are highly technical, and they pertain to engineering, nuclear materials, the environment, infrastructure, public health and safety, and security.”
Mossman said the panel’s work is in a formal court setting, sifting through legal suits about nuclear reactor operations, the use of nuclear materials or the disposal of nuclear wastes. Drawing on a pool of 20 to 30 judges located across the United States, the ASLBP assembles three judge panels for each case that comes before it. Typically, panels comprise one legal judge and two technical judges.
Panelists are chosen based on the content of cases and the technical issues in question. Each judge has one independent vote, and court decisions can be appealed through the federal circuit court where the suit originated. For example, Arizona would have jurisdiction over a suit concerning the Palo Verde nuclear plant.
The panel is likely to see a significant increase in activity in the next 18 to 24 months, as nuclear utilities submit license applications for new nuclear plants, Mossman says. Another area the panel will deal with is the suitability of Yucca Mountain, Nev., as a site for a high-level waste repository. Yucca Mountain is the U.S. government’s proposed site for the long-term storage of the U.S. nuclear reactor wastes. It is proposed to be the site where nuclear wastes from all over the United States will be stored for periods up to thousands of years, raising many scientific, engineering and social concerns.
“There are groups that are very concerned about Yucca Mountain,” Mossman says. “They are concerned about the geology of the site and about the storage of wastes at this site for very long periods of time. There also are concerns about the safe transportation of wastes to Yucca Mountain. This panel will help sort through these issues and see which concerns have legal merit.”
Mossman has published widely in topics such as biological effects of low- and high-dose X-ray, gamma and neutron radiation; radiation exposure during pregnancy; the health effects of radon; and radiation protection and public policy. His research includes nuclear regulatory science and policy and managing small risks, as well as risk perception and risk communication.
--Skip Derra, skip.derra@asu.edu
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 16, 2008
Yucca Mountain layoffs imminent, official warns
Application date might be missed
By Keith Rogers
Review-Journal
The nation's nuclear waste chief painted a dismal picture Tuesday of the Yucca Mountain Project's future, one that shows 500 layoffs and casts doubt on submitting a license application this summer.
Given the lack of funding to achieve program goals, the first deliveries of 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel probably will not arrive for entombment in the ridge in 2017 because the repository will not be open, said Ward Sproat, director of the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.
"There are going to be significant layoffs, several hundred. They're going to come in waves," he told Nevada's Legislative Committee on High-Level Radioactive Waste.
He later told the committee, led by state Sen. Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, that "at least 500 people would be removed from the program in the next several months, the majority in Nevada, some in New Mexico from Sandia (National) labs."
Of the "65 to 70" workers at the Yucca Mountain site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where a fence stretches across the entrance to the 25-foot-diameter tunnel that loops through the ridge, "basically all are going to be let go in the next 30 days," Sproat said.
Project spokesman Allen Benson said the tunnel's ventilation system was shut down in late December to save on "substantial" electrical bills. The cost at the site for electrical utilities, water and maintenance was $3 million last year.
Sproat said the program staffs some 2,400 full-time positions, but funding cutbacks by Congress of $108 million from the 2008 budget this late in the fiscal year have left him no choice but to pursue layoffs.
The Bush administration requested $494.5 million for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Congress in December approved $386.5 million.
The lack of money probably will push back the Department of Energy's self-imposed June 30 license application deadline.
"I cannot stand behind the June 30, 2008, date," Sproat said about the deadline he had set for submitting a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The submission would start what he expected to be at least a three-year review.
Sproat, a political appointee who predicts he will be fired in 12 months under a new administration, said he hopes the license application will be submitted under his watch.
"I am mildly optimistic, cautiously optimistic, that we will get a license application done, but I just don't know yet," he said.
Because of the cutbacks, complete construction of a rail line across east-central Nevada to deliver spent fuel will slip at least two years to 2016. As for construction to be under way in October 2009, "that's not going to happen," he said.
"The transportation piece is off the critical path. That's where we took the resources from" to make up for funding reductions, Sproat said.
And, receipt of the waste in 2017, as planned, isn't feasible.
"I would say the 2017 date is not achievable given the funding we've got," he said.
Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency and a critic of the Yucca Mountain Project, said outside the meeting that many of the layoffs will involve contractor personnel whose jobs would end anyway as their roles in the licensing work are completed.
Despite Sproat's direction to scale back aspects of the project, Nevada is not going to soften in its opposition, Loux said.
Late Tuesday, attorneys representing Nevada filed a 30-page appeal with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that challenged a three-judge panel's rejection of Nevada's challenge that a database of 3.5 million licensing documents should not be certified as complete because crucial studies and safety reports are missing or are works in progress.
Without the documents, Nevada would have difficulty completing its review of the licensing data in the required six-month span, the state said.
"For these reasons, the commission should reverse the ... board's decision, strike DOE's certification and require that DOE may certify only when it has provided all of the core technical documents necessary to permit 'focused and meaningful contentions,'" the appeal said.
At the committee's meeting, Loux described a list of more than 25 concerns about the project, including DOE's repository design being only about 40 percent complete and the agency's failure to address fully the potential for terrorism and sabotage in transporting nuclear waste across the nation.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
January 16, 2008
DEMOCRATIC DEBATE: Hopefuls play safe, nice
Conciliatory tone dominates as Clinton, Edwards, Obama share stage
By Molly Ball
Review-Journal
The three remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination hid their claws in kid gloves Tuesday night in Las Vegas in a debate that was mostly civil despite the tensions roiling the race.
Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama were taking no risks as they sought to make their closing arguments to Nevada voters with just days to go before Saturday's caucus here.
"We're the survivors of what has been a year-long campaign," Clinton pointed out as all three expressed their respect for one another.
The candidates sat around a table at Cashman Center in downtown Las Vegas only feet from one another, with NBC's Brian Williams and Tim Russert just across. The dining-table intimacy had a far different feel than the line of podiums of most past debates.
The debate kicked off with the issue of race. Held on Martin Luther King's birthday and sponsored by black and Hispanic organizations, the discussion had been designated to revolve around minority issues long before the campaigns waded into that land-mined territory in recent days.
All three scrambled for the high ground during the two-hour debate, the second in Las Vegas for candidates vying for the Democratic nomination.
"I think what's most important is that Senator Obama and I agree completely that neither race nor gender should be a part of this campaign," Clinton said.
She praised Edwards for his humble background, called Obama "inspirational" and concluded, "We're all family in the Democratic Party."
Obama said, "I know that John and Hillary have always been committed to racial equality." He said his campaign was about the idea "that we can't solve these challenges unless we can come together as a people, and we're not falling into the same traps of division that we have in the past."
Edwards said he'd seen the civil rights movement first-hand growing up in North Carolina, "and I feel an enormous personal responsibility to continue to move forward."
The candidates stuck to the messages they wanted to impart. Obama: I'm inspiring. Clinton: I'm seasoned. Edwards: I'm a fighter.
TALKING TO NEVADANS
Although they had a national audience, the candidates took pains to speak to the Nevada electorate they are fighting hard to win over in these final days before the caucuses.
Clinton illustrated a point about the need for leadership in America with a recent tour of a local neighborhood.
"I went door to door in Las Vegas last week and I met construction workers who've been laid off," she said. "I met a casino employee who's already been laid off."
Obama used the state to segue into a discussion of alternative energy: "You look at a state like Nevada, one thing I know is folks have got a lot of sun here," he said. "And yet we have not seen any serious effort, on the part of this administration, to spur on the use of alternative fuels."
Nevada's pet issue, the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, got a deeper look than it has in the past and inspired some of the most pointed exchanges among the candidates.
"The people of Nevada have found it's easier to promise to end it than it is to end it," Williams said of the dump. He asked the candidates whether they would pledge to kill the project.
"I will end the notion of Yucca Mountain because it has not been based on the sort of sound science that can assure the people in Nevada that they're going to be safe," Obama said.
Clinton, who has made the most strenuous effort to out-Yucca her rivals, used the issue to take them on.
"I have been consistently against Yucca Mountain," she said, noting that a few months ago she presided over a committee hearing on the project in the Senate.
She suggested the other candidates didn't have her commitment: "Barack has one of his biggest supporters in terms of funding, the Exelon Corporation, which has spent millions of dollars trying to make Yucca Mountain the waste repository," she said, referring to a nuclear-power company based in Illinois whose employees are major givers to Obama's campaign. "John was in favor of it twice, when he voted to override President Clinton's veto and then voted for it again."
Obama said the fact that his state has more nuclear plants than any other made it all the more noble that he has stood against the project.
Edwards said that between the time he voted and today, new scientific evidence, such as an investigation into falsified research results, has changed his mind.
Edwards maintained that opposing Yucca ought to mean opposing nuclear power. He has taken a hard line against it, while Obama and Clinton say it should be left on the table as long as the waste issue is resolved first.
"I am against building more nuclear power plants because I do not think we have a safe way to dispose of the waste," he said. "I think they're dangerous, they're great terrorist targets and they're extraordinarily expensive."
Going further into the energy issue, Clinton strongly condemned a 2005 energy bill that Obama voted for and she voted against.
"I think it's well accepted that the 2005 energy bill was the Dick Cheney lobbyist energy bill," she said. "It had enormous giveaways to the oil and gas industries. It was the wrong policy for America. It was so heavily tilted toward the special interests."
In an implicit poke at Obama, she said of changing American energy policy: "It's not going to happen by hoping for it."
Obama said he voted for the bill "because it was the single largest investment in clean energy -- solar, wind, biodiesel -- that we had ever seen."
And Edwards snapped, "I believe, Senator Clinton, you've raised more money from those people than any candidate, Democrat or Republican. I think we have to be able to take those people on if we're going to actually change our policy."
Edwards again took a further environmental position than the other two, saying he would stop the building of coal-fired power plants in America.
STYLE AND LEADERSHIP
Obama had to answer for comments published in today's Reno Gazette-Journal in which he said he didn't think he was a CEO type.
"Being president is not making sure that schedules are being run properly or the paperwork is being shuffled effectively," he said. "It involves having a vision for where the country needs to go."
Clinton took aim: "I think that there is a difference here," she said. "I do think that being president is the chief executive officer." President Bush, she said, promised to set goals and let others follow them, and "we've seen the results of a president who, frankly, failed at that."
Obama said, "I think there's something, if we're going to evaluate George Bush and his failures as president, that I think are much more important. He was very efficient. He was on time all the time. ... What he could not do is listen to perspectives that didn't agree with his ideological predispositions."
WAR AND SAFETY
The candidates tried to draw differences on the war in Iraq.
In a segment in which each candidate got to ask another a question, Clinton asked Obama whether he would co-sponsor a bill she has proposed that she said would prevent President Bush from dictating the next president's war policy without input from Congress.
"We can work on that, Hillary," Obama said, drawing laughs. He noted his opposition to the war from the outset and said it would be his "first job as commander in chief" to change course.
Edwards interjected, "I think I've actually, among the three of us, been the most aggressive and said that I will have all combat troops out in the first year that I'm president of the United States."
The moderators noted that in a previous debate, none of the three pledged to get all American troops out of Iraq by 2013. But Obama said that had been misinterpreted as meaning they would all continue the war.
"I will end the war as we understand it in terms of combat missions," he said. "But we are going to have to protect our embassy. We're going to have to protect our civilians."
Edwards said rather than having an anti-terrorism force in Iraq, he would put it in Kuwait, to end the perception of U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Later, Williams read a statement Clinton made recently that raised the specter of terrorism by noting that an attack was attempted on English soil shortly after Prime Minister Gordon Brown took office.
She said, "The fact is that we face a very dangerous adversary, and to forget that or to brush it aside I think is a mistake. So I do feel that the next president has to be prepared."
Obama said there was "no doubt that we've been dominated by a politics of fear since 9/11."
The risks are real, he said, but "when Senator Clinton uses the specter of a terrorist attack with a new prime minister during a campaign, I think that is part and parcel with what we've seen: the use of the fear of terrorism in scoring political points."
The mistaken decision to go in to Iraq comes from such manipulations, he suggested: "That's what happens when your judgment is clouded."
Clinton said, "I think there's a difference between what President Bush has done, which has, frankly, used fear as a political weapon, and a recognition, in a very calm and deliberative way, that, yes, we have real enemies and we'd better be prepared and we'd better be ready to meet them on Day One."
INSIDE THE HALL
Inside the theater, the audience of about 2,000 was well-behaved, with a couple of exceptions.
Early in the debate, a man seated in the balcony caused a brief delay when he stood to yell, "We do not want these race-based questions coming from you two" -- apparently addressing Williams and Russert.
And just as the debate's first commercial break was announced, a woman near the front of the theater called out something about "black and brown."
Obama got the only applause of the debate following a question about whether black and Hispanic voters are divided.
"Not in Illinois," he answered to laughter and applause. "They all voted for me."
Following the debate, Clark County residents who were in the audience said they were impressed buy how civil and positive the three candidates remained throughout.
"I liked it because we really need to know who is the best candidate, not what is the worst thing they have done in their lives," said 47-year-old Mexican immigrant Irma Varela-Wynants.
But because the candidates were on their best behavior, there were few notable moments in the debate, they said.
"I did notice that one moment when the candidates were discussing their pros and cons, and Hillary totally avoided her cons," said Robert Rosales, 48. "But it's just politics, and she's good at it."
Rosales said he had come to the debate undecided about who to vote for, and the debate didn't change that.
"It's still early."
Also undecided was 81-year-old Mary Tapia.
"I still have to go home and process the whole thing," she said. "It's between her (Clinton) and Obama."
Tapia said she was still trying to decide whether she is ready for a female president.
Varela-Wynants, an Obama supporter who became a U.S. citizen several years ago, said she was disappointed that more debate time wasn't given to the topic of immigration.
"It's such a complex issue, and nobody really has an answer," she said. "Everybody talks about the bad, but nobody recognizes that brand new people bring energy and money to this country."
--Review-Journal writer Lynnette Curtis contributed to this report. Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2919.
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Las Vegas SUN
January 16, 2008
Jon Ralston tells Nevada to soak up the love while it can
By Jon Ralston
They like us. They really like us. At least until Saturday.
Nothing says love better in a campaign than a flat-out, shameless genuflection for votes, a prostration before a targeted electorate on an issue politicians think the voters care about. And there it was on MSNBC on Tuesday evening, amid all the nationally targeted messages on issues such as race (let’s calm the waters) and the war (we all want the troops out): Yucca Mountain at center stage in a presidential debate, a microcosm of an unprecedented week in the history of Nevada politics.
During a week already characterized by schizophrenic national media lampooning Nevada (strippers can caucus!) on the one hand and marveling at the state’s ability to change the course of the Democratic nominating process on the other, came what Ben Smith of The Politico called, quite accurately, the “inevitable breathless Nevada pander.”
But they expended a lot of breath doing it, showing just how important they believe Saturday’s result could be as a pivot point leading to South Carolina and Tsunami Tuesday.
The Yucca Mountain exchange came after all three candidates gratuitously had thrown in Nevada references, with Hillary Clinton recounting her sojourn in a Hispanic neighborhood, Barack Obama mentioning how he wants to improve the lives of Nevadans and John Edwards talking about the Nevada dream sought by the thousands flocking here every month. They talked, as if it were second nature, of Las Vegas and Reno, and when a question was read by an e-mailer from Henderson, well, it doesn’t get better than that, as the mayor of a lesser city in Southern Nevada likes to say.
But the offhand mentions of cities were pander practice runs compared with what the trio came up with when Brian Williams asked the Democratic contenders to pledge to end the dump site. And they all (shockingly) did without a word about how they might undo what has been approved by the federal government and is about to go through the final hoop of licensing (and court battles, of course).
Clinton was the readiest and pointed out after Obama’s denunciation of the project and before Edwards had a chance to speak that of all the pure candidates on the stage, she was the purest. After saying she had been “consistently against Yucca Mountain,” she pointed to Obama’s support from dump backer Exelon and Edwards’ having once embraced the project.
Yucca Mountain as a wedge issue in a presidential debate? Make all the stripper jokes you want, folks. You cannot beat that.
Obama came up with a clever riposte to Clinton, without denying his manifest support from Exelon and while the debate was in progress, the Clinton campaign put out a news release detailing the company’s enthusiasm for the project. The Illinois senator rejoined, “Well, I think it’s a testimony to my commitment and opposition to Yucca Mountain that despite the fact that my state has more nuclear power plants than any other state in the country, I’ve never supported Yucca Mountain.”
He couldn’t talk about Exelon, so that was as good as he could do.
Edwards had to make a quick pivot, too, because he was an ardent Yucca backer until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got his mind right late in his only Senate term. So Edwards smartly turned to nuclear power and his lone opposition to it.
Best he, too, could do in the situation, and before the discussion moved on, Clinton hit him again on voting for Yucca Mountain.
But more important, none of them said explicitly what he or she might do as president to stop the dump.
But as the eventual nominee uses the issue against the Republican (and likely Yucca-friendly) standard-bearer here during the fall campaign, we will see whether the dump issue really cuts here. Remember that George W. Bush was thoroughly disingenuous about the issue during his 2000 campaign and I and others pointed that out and contrasted his position with Al Gore’s and Bush still won the state.
For now, let’s look at the bright side. At least they were talking about it on a national stage and we have three more days to soak in their love, which, sincere or not, lasting or not, will make us feel as if they like us, they really like us.
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Las Vegas SUN
January 16, 2008
Kumbaya
Democrats take a deep breath and dial back on rhetoric that could hurt all of them
positions — during a debate Tuesday night at Cashman Center.
By J. Patrick Coolican, Michael Mishak
After weeks of increasingly sharp rhetoric about race and heated arguments about minor policy differences, the Democratic candidates used a televised Las Vegas debate Tuesday to stress civility, articulation and agreement.
As such, there was no clear victor among the candidates. But that’s not to say there were no winners.
Viewers were treated to a reasoned, substantive conversation about important issues, the sort of discussion serious voters often find lacking in political campaigns.
For the Democratic Party, the debate turned into a free two-hour advertisement for its ideas, even as the Republican race was thrown into more turmoil. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the Michigan primary Tuesday, a victory by a third different candidate in as many contests.
Nevada residents were also clear winners: They saw the candidates argue about killing Yucca Mountain and who would do it with more alacrity.
If there were losers, Tim Russert was among them. The NBC News veteran used his patented style of questioning: You once said this, now you say that. Will you renounce this? Will you renounce that? The purpose was to draw the candidates into conflict and provide sound bite moments. They declined to take the bait.
Voters trying to choose a favorite based on the issues got little help from the candidates, with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in apparent agreement on most subjects. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, however, did distance himself from the two front-runners on a handful of issues.
The softer tone of the evening likely flows from Clinton’s surprise New Hampshire triumph.
That victory came days after a sharp New Hampshire debate that often featured Clinton in disputes with Obama and Edwards.
In the days after, anecdotal evidence suggested that women resented the two men for attacking Clinton. Also, Obama was criticized for saying coolly to Clinton, “You’re likable enough” while looking down.
Clinton has had reasons of her own to cool the rhetoric. After her New Hampshire victory, she has less urgent need to try to drive up negative impressions of her opponents. Doing so could risk a backlash for being seen as too harsh, especially against two candidates regarded positively by much of the Democratic Party.
Some of Clinton’s supporters in recent days have made sometimes clumsy statements about Obama and his admitted teenage drug use, as well as other statements that seem to push stereotypes about black men.
When Obama and Clinton were pressed to talk about the racial issue at Tuesday’s debate, held on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, they blamed supporters and staff for being overzealous. They called for unity.
The debate was not, however, an uninterrupted political lovefest. The three candidates occasionally faulted each other’s policy positions and -- at least obliquely -- questioned their opponents’ readiness for the presidency.
Clinton pointedly refused to acknowledge that she considers Obama and Edwards qualified to be president. “I think that’s up to the voters to decide,” Clinton responded.
Later, Clinton, trying to position herself as the candidate most ardently against the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, pointed out that one of Obama’s biggest financial supporters is the Exelon Corp., an energy company that favors Yucca, and that Edwards voted for the dump while in the Senate.
Obama and Edwards responded with strong rebuttals.
“It’s a testimony to my commitment and opposition to Yucca Mountain that despite the fact that my state has more nuclear power plants than any other state in the country, I’ve never supported Yucca Mountain,” Obama said.
Edwards said “the science that has been revealed” since his two Senate votes has left him unalterably opposed to Yucca.
With just three candidates on the stage, the front-runners were able to conduct a detailed and articulate discussion of issues, including many important to Nevadans, including the economy, the foreclosure crisis, energy, the Iraq war and the Second Amendment.
Some highlights:
Edwards and Clinton expressed regret for voting for a 2001 bill that would have made it harder for people to clear away their debts when declaring bankruptcy. (Obama was not yet a U.S. senator at the time.) Though the bill did not pass Congress, it paved the way for a 2005 measure that became law. Obama and Clinton opposed the bill. (Edwards’ term had expired.)
Questioned about the economy, the candidates used the opportunity to talk about the subprime mortgage crisis, which has hit Nevada harder than any other state -- and, as Clinton noted, the black and Latino communities in particular.
All three candidates are in broad agreement: They support a moratorium on foreclosures and a freeze of rising mortgage interest rates to give homeowners time to convert to more affordable fixed-rate loans. They also propose a fund to help affected homeowners cope with the crisis.
Clinton is calling for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures and a five-year rate freeze, both dependent on the voluntary cooperation of lenders.
By contrast, Edwards would effectively make those measures mandatory from the outset. He proposes protecting homeowners from foreclosures until their lenders offer assistance, and freezing interest rates for seven years.
Both Clinton and Edwards support some kind of reporting system to track the progress of lenders in converting subprime loans.
Obama has proposed a new tax credit on mortgage interest for people who do not itemize their deductions and cannot currently deduct their interest payments. He also supports a government fund to help victims of loan fraud.
All three support a change in bankruptcy law that would allow homeowners to renegotiate the terms of their mortgages.
On Iraq, Obama pledged to withdraw troops by the end of 2009 -- a promise Clinton and Edwards echoed. Still, Edwards sought to draw a distinction with his two main rivals, who have vowed to keep a small military presence in the country to guard the embassy and to maintain a strike force outside the country to respond to terrorist training camps.
“As long as you keep combat troops in Iraq,” Edwards said, “you continue the occupation. If you keep military bases in Iraq, you’re continuing the occupation. The occupation must end.”
As Clinton’s request, Obama promised to join her in bringing legislation that would forbid President Bush from making any agreements with the Iraqi government about continuing U.S. presence in Iraq beyond his term of office without congressional approval.
Even though the sponsors of the debate included black and Hispanic activist groups and it was billed as the “black and brown debate,” the discussion largely ignored issues important to those communities, including stagnating wages and minority health care, affordable rental housing and mass transit.
The genteel behavior onstage continued after the debate as Clinton addressed a crowd of about 1,200 at Desert Pines High School. “We are all Democrats,” she said. “We all believe in the power and possibility of America.”
Of the caucuses, Clinton said: “Bring your friends, family and neighbors. When people say, ‘I like all the candidates,’ say, ‘We do, too.’
“It’s great that we have this young man from the South who grew up in a mill town, an African-American who has so much to give our country, and we have a woman. This is good news for our country.”
Obama spoke to a group of SEIU workers at Paradise Cantina off the Strip. He made no reference to the debate and simply thanked supporters for their help. The union has endorsed Obama.
Edwards had no public appearance.
--Sun writers Barry Horstman, Emily Richmond and Alexandra Berzon contributed to this report. Sun new media intern April Corbin provided audio.
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Las Vegas SUN
January 16, 2008
MSNBC Debate Highlight: Yucca Mountain
By MSNBC
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards discuss Yucca Mountain.
(audio)
http://www.lasvegassun.com/videos/2008/jan/16/67/
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Las Vegas SUN
January 16, 2008
Complete debate transcript
via MSNBC
SPEAKERS: SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, D-N.Y.
FORMER SEN. JOHN EDWARDS, D-N.C.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA, D-ILL.
NATALIE MORALES, MODERATOR BRIAN WILLIAMS, MODERATOR
TIM RUSSERT, MODERATOR
WILLIAMS: Before we get under way, we need to thank all of our hosts for this evening, in part so our candidates don’t feel the need to.
The Nevada Democratic Party. That includes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
The African-American organization known as 100 Black Men of America.
Also, our local Nevada partners in this: Impacto; the African- American Democratic Leadership Council; and, of course, the College of Southern Nevada.
We have told the members of our vast studio audience here tonight that we cannot allow applause or any outbursts following the candidates’ responses.
We will open with a Q&A format, allowing for 90-second answers, lights will alert the candidates to the end of time; some 30-second answers; and then follow-ups at the moderator’s discretion.
Finally, for tonight’s debate of the top three Democratic contenders, I am joined by my partner Tim Russert, our Washington bureau chief and of course moderator of “Meet the Press” on NBC; and Natalie Morales of “Today” on NBC, who will be handling some of the thousands of e-mail questions we’ve received over the past few days directed to the candidates.
We thank you all for being here.
And before we begin with the questioning, we have to mix a bit of breaking political news with the business of our debate tonight. At this hour, as we come on the air, we are prepared to report that NBC News is projecting that when all the votes are counted in tonight’s Michigan primary, Mitt Romney is the projected winner of that contest.
Again, in the Michigan primary tonight, a former Massachusetts governor, a son of the state of Michigan, Mitt Romney, will be the projected winner.
WILLIAMS: That is according to an NBC News estimate. And now, we can begin with the questioning tonight.
As we sit here, this, as many of you may know, is the Reverend Martin Luther King’s birthday. Race was one of the issues we expected to discuss here tonight. Our sponsors expected it of us. No one, however, expected it to be quite so prominent in this race as it has been over the last 10 days.
We needn’t go back over all that has happened, except to say that this discussion, before it was over, involved Dr. King, President Johnson, even Sidney Poitier, several members of Congress, and a prominent African-American businessman supporting Senator Clinton, who made what seemed to be a reference to a party of Senator Obama’s teenage past that the Senator himself has written about in his autobiography.
The question to begin with here tonight, Senator Clinton, is: How did we get here?
CLINTON: Well, I think what’s most important is that Senator Obama and I agree completely that, you know, neither race nor gender should be a part of this campaign.
CLINTON: It is Dr. King’s birthday. The three of us are here in large measure because his dreams have been realized. John, who is, as we know, the son of a millworker and really has become an extraordinary success, as Senator Obama who has such an inspirational and profound story to tell America and the world; I, as a woman, who is also a beneficiary of the civil rights movement and the women’s movement and the human rights movement, and the Democratic Party has always been in the forefront of that.
So I very much appreciate what Senator Obama and I did yesterday, which is that we both have exuberance and sometimes uncontrollable supporters; that we need to get this campaign where it should be.
We’re all family in the Democratic Party. We are so different from the Republicans on all of these issues in every way that affects the future of the people that care so much about.
So I think that it’s appropriate on Dr. King’s birthday, his actual birthday, to recognize that all of us are here as a result of what he did, all of the sacrifice, including giving his life, along with so many of the other icons that we honor.
CLINTON: But I know that Senator Obama and I share a very strong commitment to making sure that this campaign is about us as individuals.
WILLIAMS: Senator Obama, same question?
OBAMA: Well, I think Hillary said it well. You know, we are, right now, I think, in a defining moment in our history. We’ve got a nation at war. Our planet is in peril. And the economy is putting an enormous strain on working families all across the country.
Now, race has always been an issue in our politics and in this country. But one of the premises of my campaign and, I think, of the Democratic Party — and I know that John and Hillary have always been committed to racial equality — is that we can’t solve these challenges unless we can come together as a people and we’re not resorting to the same — or falling into the same traps of division that we have in the past.
OBAMA: I think our party has stood for that. Dr. King stood for that. I hope that my campaign has inspired that same sense, that there’s much more that we hold in common than what separates us.
And that is how I want to move this campaign forward and I hope that’s how it moves forward.
WILLIAMS: Senator Edwards, you waded into this topic tangentially yesterday.
EDWARDS: Well, the only thing I would add is I had the perspective of living in the South, including a time when there was segregation in the South.
And I feel an enormous personal responsibility to continue to move forward. Now, we’ve made great progress, but we’re not finished with that progress.
EDWARDS: And the struggles and sacrifice of Dr. King and many others who gave blood, sweat, tears, and in some cases, their lives to move America toward equality.
And I saw it. I saw it when four young men walked into a Woolworth luncheon counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and sat down, had the courage and strength to do the right thing. And they literally stood up, stood up on behalf of African Americans, on behalf of southerners, on behalf of Americans helped move this country forward in a really serious way.
And having seen the pain and the struggle and the sacrifice of so many up close — because I lived with it. I lived with it in my years growing up — I think we, all of us, have an enormous responsibility not to go back but to go forward.
And I would just add, I think it goes far beyond the Democratic Party. This is about America and about creating real equality in America across the waterfront.
WILLIAMS: Questioning continues with Tim Russert.
RUSSERT: In terms of accountability, Senator Obama, Senator Clinton on Sunday told me that the Obama campaign had been pushing this storyline. And, true enough, your press secretary in South Carolina — four pages of alleged comments made by the Clinton people about the issue of race.
In hindsight, do you regret pushing this story?
OBAMA: Well, not only in hindsight, but going forward. I think that, as Hillary said, our supporters, our staff get overzealous. They start saying things that I would not say. And it is my responsibility to make sure that we’re setting a clear tone in our campaign, and I take that responsibility very seriously, which is why I spoke yesterday and sent a message in case people were not clear that what we want to do is make sure that we focus on the issues.
Now, there are going to be significant issues that we debate, and some serious differences that we have.
OBAMA: And I’m sure those will be on display today.
What I am absolutely convinced of is that everybody here is committed to racial equality — has been historically. And what I also expect is that I’m going to be judged as a candidate in terms of how I’m going to be improving the lives of the people in Nevada and the people all across the country, that they are going to ultimately be making judgments on can I deliver on good jobs at good wages; can I make sure that our home foreclosure crisis is adequately dealt with; are we going to be serious about retirement security; and are we going to have a foreign policy that makes us safe.
If I’m communicating that message, then I expect to be judged on that basis. And if I’m not, then I expect to be criticized on that basis. That’s the kind of campaign that we want to run and that we have run up until this point.
RUSSERT: Do you believe this is a deliberate attempt to marginalize you as the black candidate?
OBAMA: No. As I said, I think that if you’ve looked not just at this campaign, but at my history, my belief is that race is a factor in our society, but I think what happened in Iowa is a testimony to the fact that the American public is willing to judge people on the basis of who can best deliver the kinds of changes that they’re so desperately looking for.
OBAMA: And that’s the kind of movement that we want to build all across the country, and that, I think, is the legacy of Dr. King that we need to build on.
RUSSERT: In New Hampshire, your polling was much higher than the actual vote result.
Do you believe, in the privacy of the voting booth, people used race as an issue?
OBAMA: No. I think what happened was that Senator Clinton ran a good campaign up in New Hampshire. And, you know, I think that people recognize we’ve got some terrific candidates who are running vigorous campaigns.
It’s going to be close everywhere we go. It’s close here in Nevada. It’s going to be close in South Carolina.
And, you know, at any given moment, people are going to be making judgments based on who they think is best speaking to them about the urgent problems that they’re facing in this country.
OBAMA: Now, the one thing I’m convinced about — and this was true in Iowa and this was true in New Hampshire, as well — is that change is going to happen because the American people determine that change is going to happen.
And that’s what I draw from Dr. King’s legacy. You know, what happens in Washington is important. And we’ve got to have elected officials that are accountable and serious about moving forward on the goals of opportunity and upward mobility.
But if we don’t have an activated people, a unified people, black, white, Latino, Asian, who are all moving in the same direction, demanding that change happens, then Washington, special interests, lobbyists end up dominating the agenda. That’s what I want to change.
RUSSERT: Senator Clinton, in terms of accountability, you told me on Sunday morning, “Any time anyone has said anything that I thought was out of bounds, they’re gone. I’ve gotten rid of them.”
RUSSERT: Shortly thereafter, that same afternoon, Robert Johnson, at your event, said, quote, “When Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood, that I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in his book,” widely viewed as a reference to Senator Obama’s book ,”Dreams From My Father” from 1995, where he talked about his drug use as a teenager.
Will you now not allow Robert Johnson to participate in any of your campaign events because of that conduct?
CLINTON: Well, Bob has put out a statement saying what he was trying to say and what he thought he had said. We accept him on his word on that.
But, clearly, we want to send a very clear message to everybody that this campaign is too important for us to either get diverted or, frankly, get the message of what we want to do for our country subverted by any kind of statements or claims that are just not part of who I am or who Barack or John are.
CLINTON: Because I think what’s critical here is that the American people understand clearly what is at stake in this election. The stakes are really high, and there’s an urgent need for leadership on a range of issues, you know, some of which are now becoming right here in front of us about whether or not people are going to be able to keep their homes in Nevada, whether they’re going to have jobs.
You know, I went door to door in Las Vegas last week and, you know, I’ve met construction workers who’ve been laid off. I met a casino employee who’s already been laid off.
So what people talk to me about is not what somebody they never heard of said, but what we say, what we’re for, what we’re standing for, and what we’re going to be pushing for.
So I accept what he said, but I think what’s important is what I say and what each of us says about the kind of president we intend to be and how we’re going to get there.
RUSSERT: Were his comments out of bounds?
CLINTON: Yes, they were.
CLINTON: And he has said that.
WILLIAMS: We’re going to continue the questioning now with Natalie Morales.
MORALES: Thank you, Brian.
And this is a question for Senator Edwards. It comes to us from Margaret Wells from San Diego, California.
Senator, she’s asking, “The policy differences among the remaining candidates is so slight that we appear to be choosing on the basis of personality and life story. That being said, why should I, as a progressive woman, not resent being forced to choose between the first viable female candidate and the first viable African American candidate?”
EDWARDS: Well, I think that the decision for every voters in this election should revolve around first whether you believe America needs change. If you do, who you think will be most effective in bringing about that change. We have different perspectives on that.
I think the system in Washington is broken. I don’t think it works. And I think the American people, middle-class Americans, are struggling and suffering.
They can’t pay for their health care. They’re losing their jobs. They can’t pay for their kids to go to college.
This is a very personal thing for me.
EDWARDS: Hillary mentioned a minute ago that I grew up in a family of millworkers. I was the first person in my family to actually be able to go to college.
And so this battle for real opportunity for everybody, the kind of chances I’ve had in my own life, is central to everything I do. It is central to this campaign. It is a personal, personal fight for me.
And I think the decision that voters make about who can best fight for the middle class, who will never give up on the fight for universal health care, who will actually stand up strongly and affirmedly to — for the right to organize, for unions to be able to organize in the workplace.
These things are not academic for me; they are my life. I believe in them to my soul and I will fight with every fiber of my being to make sure that everybody gets that kind of opportunity, and I think there are some differences on policy and perspective between the three of us, and I hope we get a chance to talk more about that tonight.
MORALES: Senator Edwards, as a follow-up to Margaret Wells’ question, what is a white male to do running against these historic candidacies?
(LAUGHTER)
EDWARDS: You know, I have to say on behalf of my party, and I’ve said this many times, I’m proud of the fact that we have a woman and an African American who are very, very serious candidates for the presidency. They’ve both asked not to be considered on their gender or their race. I respect that.
I do believe, however, that it says really good things about America. I think I actually believe that both through these primaries and caucuses and in the general election, that the American people are going to make decisions based on who we are, what we stand for, and what we’re fighting for.
WILLIAMS: Question for Senator Obama. You won the women’s vote in Iowa, but Senator Clinton won the women’s vote in New Hampshire, and there probably isn’t an American alive today who hasn’t heard the post-game analysis of New Hampshire, all the reasons the analysts give for Senator Clinton’s victory. Senator Clinton had a moment where she became briefly emotional at a campaign appearance.
WILLIAMS: But another given was at the last televised debate, when you, in a comment directed to Senator Clinton, looked down and said, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.”
That caused Frank Rich to write, on the op-ed page of the New York Times, that it was “your most inhuman moment, to date.” And it clearly was a factor and added up.
Senator Obama, do you regret the comment, and comments like that, today?
OBAMA: Well, I absolutely regret it because that wasn’t how it was intended. I mean, folks were giving Hillary a hard time about likability. And my intention was to say, “I think you’re plenty likable.”
(LAUGHTER)
And it did not come out the way it was supposed to.
But, you know, I do think that, during the course of that debate, there was a tendency to parse out what is, I think, not an issue.
I think all three of these candidates are good, capable people. And what we really should be focusing on is who’s got a vision for how we’re going to move the country forward?
And I believe that, right now, the only way we’re going to move the country forward is if we can bring the country together, not just Democrats but independents, Republicans who have also lost trust in government, and we are able to push aside the special interests and the lobbyists, and we are truthful with the American people and enlisting them in changing how our health care system works, how our economy works, what our tax code looks like.
OBAMA: And that is going to be an issue that, I think, all of us are going to have to struggle with over the coming days. It’s not going to be an issue of, you know, who’s got the nicest smile or, you know, who’s going to be fun to have a beer with.
It’s going to be, who can provide the leadership that makes sure the country is moving forward through what I anticipate are going to be some difficult times, and who is going to be able to transform how Washington works in a fundamental way.
WILLIAMS: And one more question about that last televised debate, Senator Edwards. Afterwards, Senator Clinton said it was as if you and Senator Obama had formed a buddy system against her. Senator Clinton put out an Internet ad that was entitled “Piling On.”
Looking back on it, the campaign for New Hampshire in total, do you admit that it might have looked that way?
EDWARDS: Might have looked that way or actually was that way? I don’t think it was that way. I mean, my job as a candidate for president of the United States is to speak the truth as I see it. I’ve spoken the truth, I will continue to speak the truth whatever the consequences are and whatever the perception that people have is.
I do believe that I am a candidate for president who is fighting for change, who believes that we have entrenched, moneyed interests in this country that are preventing the middle class from having a real chance. And it’s drug companies, insurance companies, oil companies. There are lobbyists. Barack spoke about them just a few minutes ago.
It’s why I’ve never, the whole time I’ve been in public life, taken a dime from Washington lobbyist or special interest PAC, because I do believe those people stand between America and the change that it so desperately needs, in real ways.
EDWARDS: They’re the reason we don’t have universal health care. They’re the reason we have a trade policy that’s cost America millions of jobs. They’re the reason we have an insane tax policy that actually gives tax breaks to American companies sending jobs overseas.
The promise of America that I and millions of others have lived — and then we are in Nevada tonight, a place that people come to in the thousands every day to find the promise of America because they believe in it.
It is central to everything we are as a nation. And I do believe that promise is being jeopardized by very well-financed monied interests. I believe that’s the truth, and I’m going to keep saying it.
WILLIAMS: Tim?
RUSSERT: Senator Clinton…
PROTESTER: Will you stop all these race-based questions?
These are race-based questions…
RUSSERT: Senator Clinton, your husband said that Senator Obama very well could be the nominee — he could win.
With that in mind, when you say that Senator Obama is raising false hopes, and you refuse to say whether he’s ready to be president, what are the consequences of those comments in the fall against the Republicans?
CLINTON: Well, Tim, we’re in a hard-fought primary season. I think each of us recognize that. You know, we’re the survivors of what has been a yearlong campaign.
But I certainly have the highest regard for both Senator Obama and Senator Edwards. I’ve worked with them. I have, you know, supported them in their previous runs for office. There’s no doubt that when we have a nominee, we’re going to have a totally unified Democratic Party.
The issue for the voters here in Nevada, South Carolina and then all of the states to come is, who is ready on day one to walk into that Oval office, knowing the problems that are going to be there waiting for our next president: a war to end in Iraq, a war to resolve in Afghanistan, an economy that I believe is slipping toward a recession, with the results already being felt here in Nevada with the highest home foreclosure rate in the entire country, 47 million Americans uninsured, an energy policy that is totally wrong for America, for our future?
CLINTON: President Bush is over in the Gulf now begging the Saudis and others to drop the price of oil. How pathetic. We should have an energy policy right now putting people to work in green collar jobs as a way to stave off the recession, moving us towards energy independence.
All of that and more is waiting for our next president.
You know, obviously each of us believes that we are the person who should walk into the oval office on January 20th, 2009. I’m presenting my experience, my qualifications, my ideas, my vision for America.
CLINTON: And it’s routed in the voices that I hear, that I’ve heard for 35 years, of people who want a better life for themselves and their children. And I’m going to keep putting forward what I have done and what I will do. And this is what this election, I think, is really about.
RUSSERT: You may think you are the best prepared, but would you acknowledge that Senator Obama and Senator Edwards are both prepared to be president?
CLINTON: Well, I think that that’s up to the voters to decide. I think that’s something that voters have to make a decision about on all of us. They have to look at each and every one of us and imagine us in the Oval Office, imagine us as commander in chief, imagine us making tough decisions about everything we know we’re going to have to deal with, and then all of the unpredictable events that come through the door of the White House and land on the desk of the president.
RUSSERT: Senator Obama, you gave an interview to the Reno Gazette-Journal and you said, “We all have strengths and weaknesses.”
WILLIAMS: You said one of your weaknesses is, quote, “I’m not an operating officer.”
Do the American people want someone in the Oval Office who is an operating officer?
OBAMA: Well, I think what I was describing was how I view the presidency. Now, being president is not making sure that schedules are being run properly or the paperwork is being shuffled effectively.
It involves having a vision for where the country needs to go.
It involves having the capacity to bring together the best people and being able to spark the kind of debate about how we’re going to solve health care; how we’re going to solve energy; how we are going to deliver good jobs and good wages; how we’re going to keep people in their homes, here in Nevada; and then being able to mobilize and inspire the American people to get behind that agenda for change.
That’s the kind of leadership that I’ve shown in the past.
OBAMA: That’s the kind of leadership that I intend to show as president of the United States. So, what’s needed is sound judgment, a vision for the future, the capacity to tap into the hopes and dreams of the American people and mobilize them to push aside those special interests and lobbyists and forces that are standing in the way of real change, and making sure that you have a government that reflects the decency and the generosity of the American people.
That’s the kind of leadership that I believe I can provide.
RUSSERT: You said each of you have strengths and weaknesses. I want to ask each of you quickly, your greatest strength, your greatest weakness.
OBAMA: My greatest strength, I think is the ability to bring people together from different perspectives to get them to recognize what they have in common and to move people in a different direction. And as I indicated before, my greatest weakness, I think, is when it comes to — I’ll give you a very good example.
OBAMA: I ask my staff member to hand me paper until two seconds before I need it because I will lose it. You know, the —- you know…
(LAUGHTER)
And my desk and my office doesn’t look good. I’ve got to have somebody around me who is keeping track of that stuff.
And that’s not trivial; I need to have good people in place who can make sure that systems run. That’s what I’ve always done, and that’s why we run not only a good campaign, but a good U.S. Senate office.
RUSSERT: Senator Edwards, greatest strength, greatest weakness?
EDWARDS: I think my greatest strength is that for 54 years, I’ve been fighting with every fiber of my being.
In the beginning, the fight was for me. Growing up in mill towns and mill villages, I had to literally fight to survive.
But then I spent 20 years in courtrooms fighting for children and families against really powerful well-financed interests. I learned from that experience, by the way, that if you’re tough enough and you’re strong enough and you got the guts and you’re smart enough, you can win. That’s a fight that can be won.
It can be won in Washington, too, by the way.
And I’ve continued that entire fight my entire time in public life.
EDWARDS: So I’ve got what it takes inside to fight on behalf of the American people and on behalf of the middle class.
I think weakness, I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to pain that I see around me, when I see a man like Donnie Ingram (ph), who I met a few months ago in South Carolina, who worked for 33 years in the mill, reminded me very much of the kind of people that I grew up with, who’s about to lose his job, has no idea where he’s going to go, what he’s going to do.
I mean, his dignity and self-respect is at issue. And I feel that in a really personal way and in a very emotional way. And I think sometimes that can undermine what you need to do.
RUSSERT: Senator Clinton?
CLINTON: Well, I am passionately committed to this country and what it stands for. I’m a product of the changes that have already occurred, and I want to be an instrument for making those changes alive and real in the lives of Americans, particularly children.
CLINTON: That’s what I’ve done for 35 years. It is really my life’s work. It is something that comes out of my own experience, both in my family and in my church that, you know, I’ve been blessed. I think to whom much is given, much is expected.
So I have tried to create oppo