Wednesday, March 11, 2009 | 10:40 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint may have started it when he told the Sun the now-doomed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is “probably going to end up a giant wine cellar.”
Now the jokes are flying, Politico reports this morning, as the nation comes to terms with a future without the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump now that President Barack Obama has said he will seriously cut funds for the project.
Stanford professor and Nobel-prize winning physicist Burton Richter suggests a Tunnel of Love-type attraction in the Nevada desert: “Yucca would give you five miles of tunnel – that’s some serious necking,” he told the paper.
Other suggestions, according to Politico:
“Maybe they can put the Obama Presidential Library down there,” quipped Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
“Maybe we can put Rush Limbaugh in there,” said Elliott Negin, spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “I don’t think it will contain him though. He’s such a force.”
Nevada’s lawmakers gave the paper a few more serious scenarios -- Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley suggested covering the desert in solar panels, while Republican Sen. John Ensign mused about an underground research lab or renewable energy facility.
The prospect of a Yucca-less future continues to play out in the national press.
National Public Radio aired a piece this morning, and the Los Angeles Times today took a look at what to do with the nuclear waste piled up in Illinois – home to more waste than most other states.
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