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WASHINGTON -- Arizona Sen. John McCain continues to stake his claim as the go-to supporter of nuclear energy and Yucca Mountain.
At a Senate energy hearing today, McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, grilled Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about including nuclear power as part of the renewable energy equation.
President Barack Obama supports nuclear power, but has proposed significantly scaling back funding for the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in the upcoming fiscal 2010 budget. Congress has consistently reduced funds to study the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, a technology some see as an alternative to storage but others dismiss as decades from fruition.
“You can’t develop nuclear power and energy in this country if you don’t reprocess and you do not use Yucca Mountain as a repository for spent nuclear fuel,” McCain said told the secretary.
“They basically killed nuclear power for the foreseeable future in this country,” McCain said. “I see no way of achieving energy independence….that nuclear power can’t be part of the equation.”
What upsets me is the decisions that are based on political bias. One man, Harry Reid, is responsible for this. How Obama can let him get away with this is beyond me.
This lack of action comes from a President who touted how SCIENCE will play a major role in his policy decisions.
Just look at how ridiculous the transactions of these last two weeks have been concerning Yucca Mountain.
If needed visit http://aBadReid.com for further details (just to much to type in here).
I know I'm totally disgusted as I very much agree with McCain's quote:
"They basically killed nuclear power for the foreseeable future in this country," McCain said. "I see no way of achieving energy independence".that nuclear power can't be part of the equation."
Bad Reid
Bad Senator
Totally agree with McCain. Again, just to rebore everyone with the following three FACTS:
1) Nevada gets 16% of its electricty from nuclear power plants as well as being defended with nuclear weapons and the nuclear Navy. All of these produce unrecyclable nuclear waste that Nevada has responsibility to help find a final storage place for, and if next door to 1000 nuclear explosions in a dry desert 100 miles from the nearest city isn't the place, no blue ribbon committee is going to find it either.
2) This decision calls into question every statement that President Obama makes relative to letting science decide during his administration. Science did pick Yucca Mountain over 20 years ago. By now excluding Nevada (and probably California, Illinois and Delaware) from any future storage site consideration Obama has obviously ended science's reign forever.
3) Obama and Reid are ignoring a national law that designates Yucca Mountain and its funding. It is not their decision to make, but Congress'.
Nuclear power may be dead, but more importantly America's republic system of representation appears to be cancelled by one Senator and one President. Where is the press' outrage and concern?
Im not a big fan of McCain but in this he makes more sense than any of the Nevada Politicians.
If anyone in Clark county doesn't like being radiated then they need to move as there are uranium deposits all thru southern Nevada.
Please be more careful when writing about nuclear waste reprocessing. You say "some" people see reprocessing as an alternative to storage. If we were to shift to a reprocessing approach for spent nuclear fuel in this country--and I agree it would take decades to bring it into production scale-- we would still need a repository, at Yucca or somewhere else:
1. For the unreclaimable waste products of reprocessing.
2. For the defense-related waste that cannot be reprocessed.
Russia, France and Japan reprocess spent fuel AND they each plan to build a repository.
Obama: "I was for nuclear power until i'm against it". Our nuclear building capability was dismantled a long time ago. I have to chuckle over any politician who claims we should/need to build X plants. The envangelical-enviros would tie it up forever.
The best reply to these comments is here:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/mar...
Any politician who uses "science" as a cover is asking for trouble. Notice how the Bush Administration censored any government scientists who talked about global warming. No doubt that pro Yucca forces would have come up with their own "science" to defend Yucca. The reality was that Yucca had a finite CAPACITY which was miraculously being expanded because by the time Yucca came on line, the supply of nuclear waste would make Yucca all but obsolete. Funny how that works.
McCain was a flip flopping fool when it came to Yucca even hinting that he no longer supported the idea during his visits to Nevada just to get votes. The real stripes of the LYING McCain have now come out. McCain is an ENEMY of Nevada.
Any Nevadan who thinks having a nuclear waste dump less than 100 miles from Las Vegas should just leave Nevada now.
The Nuclear Power Industry has for years touted itself as safe, clean, and cheap when the reality is just the opposite especially when you factor in the full cost of nuclear waste disposal. Just google the number of near incidents at San Onofre and the violations that have occured repeatedly there over the past decade. We're lucky that another Chernobyl has taken place.
Thank you Harry Reid for putting an end to the Screw Nevada Initiative.
RIP Yucca.
MCCAIN'S OWN WORDS DURING THE CAMPAIGN,
But in a talk on nuclear security at the University of Denver, McCain offered another approach as part of global efforts to watchdog civilian nuclear power:
"I would seek to establish an international repository for spent nuclear fuel that could collect and safely store materials overseas that might otherwise be reprocessed to acquire bomb-grade materials. It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada."
Hypocrite.