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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.
As there is no one working in downtown so that would be a good place to start storage of the high level materials. By the time the socialist/Reid economy becomes a success the material would be safe.
All the hype that the press purchased hook, line and sinker about Obama basing his decisons on science is so laughable.
What did he have a secret group of scientists studying Yucca and give him a report in the last 60 days?
It was based on political science and nothing else.
I hope the press gulps down somemore of that kool-aid.
Turning Yucca into a theme park is a great idea! How about calling it "The hole where billions of you tax dollars disappears"! Oooooo scary!
jfnance32,
What motivates you?
I care about our economy. I'd like to see tourism and the casinos come back. I'd like to see the guys who make their living raising cows in Nye County and selling milk to California do well. I'd like to see us all do better.
Opening Yucca would certainly slow down our tourist business and make the marketing problem for our farmers and ranchers one hell of a lot harder. Any balanced look at what it does to Nevada's economy says Harry Reid is right, and thank you President Obama for backing him up.
It's a free country, and you can spew all you like, but what makes you tick?
KeepNVStrong
Do you remember around 40 years ago when they were doing Nuclear bomb test at NTS. There used to be parties on top of the casinos so people could watch them. So your statement that it would slow down tourism is false. When Yucca is finally open people won't even know the difference it will be the same as a garbage truck driving by. Now don't take that litterally because the waste would not be going thru Las Vegas.
Why don't you do some investigation of reputable sites rather than Harry Reids.
This state is a one-dimensional income state. If you don't work for a casino your jobs will be in danger.
KeepNVStrong
You must be kidding - you think any tourists that come to town could give a rip if there is a nuclear site 100 miles off in the desert at the Nevada Test Site, where, by the way, many, many nuclear weapons have been fired - did that keep tourists away in the past? Polling of tourists on the strip have shown that the vast majority have never even heard of Yucca Mt. Besides, the waste won't even be sent through Las Vegas.
This whole thing is so ridiculous, I can't even believe it. The NRC's dose criteria amounts to about 1 chest x-ray per year. People living in Denver receive significantly more radiation than this limit just by fact they live at higher elevation. Why isn't Harry Reid demanding that people be forceably removed from Denver?
So, the bottom line is that we, in the state of Nevada, are more concerned that a mythical farmer raising cows in the desert 750,000 years from now might receive a chest xray per year than we are about nuclear waste resting in buildings about 100 yards from the Great Lakes and large population centers.
Now, based on these wacky concerns, we are potentially holding back nuclear power in this country, making life more dangerous for a whole lot of people outside Nevada, and we are throwing away the biggest construction project that will occur in a lifetime, and that would employ many Nevadans with high-paying, non-casino jobs. It also brings in much-needed scientists and engineers that would otherwise not venture near a city like Las Vegas.
KeepNVStrong:
Sorry to join the dogpile, but you really stepped into it there, revealing both a lack of history and knowledge on the subject of nuclear science in Nevada, and a susceptibility to the laughable "socioeconomic studies" produced by the propaganda office formerly run by embezzler Bob Loux and now run by former sportscaster and baseball card expert Bruce Breslow.
Anyhoo, it would seem to me that you are the better subject for probing personal psychological questions such as "What makes you tick?" You clearly have a vested interest in believing the utter fiction posing as "socioeconomic study" in the Yucca Mountain debate.
If you think that consumers of the vast supply of diary products coming out of Southern Nevada will suddenly worry about... what? possible contamination from Yucca Mountain moving through the food chain? Don't you suppose that, by your logic, those same consumers would be deathly afraid to ingest dairy products from cows lodged anywhere near the Nevada Test Site, where over 900 atomic weapons were detonated?
I would recommend that you check out Mike Davis' essay on Las Vegas and the Nevada Test Site in his book "Dead Cities." There you will find the most grotesque photographs of atomically deformed livestock carcasses you could ever imagine. If you really believe that a repository at Yucca Mountain would ever be able to top that legacy and somehow inspire consumer panic where the Nevada Test Site didn't succeed in doing so, then I would ask you to share your Kool-Aid, because clearly it's more effective than mine.
We don't need to do anything with it, except remove all of the equipment, remediate the site, and give it back to the Western Shoshone, from whom it was summarily stolen. This land has historically been used (and still is used) by the Western Shoshone for gathering medicinal plants and for religious ceremonies. The US was directed by the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in March 2006 to "cease, desist and freeze" all US activities on Western Shoshone Treaty Land. This includes the Nevada Test Site, Yucca Mountain, and the mining licenses granted to private companies on Western Shoshone land. This land is protected under the treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, which was never rescinded or amended by either party. If treaties and international agreements are the highest law in the land according to our own constitution, this land should be restored to the Western Shoshone immediately. It was never the US's to use for any purpose.
You are celebrating a victory that is not won people. Obama is President. Now. He will not be in either 4 or 8 years. The nuclear waste will still need to be dealt with and Harry Reid may well be unemployed after 2010.
Yucca will be built and used, not because I say it will, but because it is still needed. The national press will latch onto this big time if either an act of sabotage or a major accident occurs at a nuclear facility. Count on it. Reid has laid his own self fulfilling trap.
No one nationally will put up with Nevada's stupidity when the spotlight is trained on this subject. It is too simple to ignore. It is a desert mountain near a nuclear testing ground where 900 devices have been detonated. There is little water and no population.
It will be built because of these reasons.
If you think you know better that's fine. Las Vegas knew we could build endless mega hotels and all the rooms would be sold too. Look around.
The best laid plans of simple minds.
"Opening Yucca would certainly slow down our tourist business and make the marketing problem for our farmers and ranchers one hell of a lot harder."
What?
FYI, just outside of Yucca is an area that was testing ground for above and below ground nuclear weapons testing.
That has not stopped people from coming and living here.