Nuclear fears raised in Ensign-Reid race for Senate

Monday, Oct. 19, 1998 | 11:19 a.m.

As long as Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., is majority leader, Nevadans need Harry Reid as their senator to keep a high-level nuclear waste dump out, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope said.

Pope kicked off a Sierra Club campaign to distribute voter guides on the hotly contested Senate race between Reid and Rep. John Ensign, R-Nev., at a rally Saturday in Lorenzi Park.

"I met with Trent Lott a year ago and asked him his top environmental priority," Pope said. "And he said, 'Building that nuclear waste dump in Nevada."'

If Ensign, who is challenging Reid, wins the election, he won't have the clout to stop Lott's No. 1 priority, Pope said.

"If there is a Senator Ensign from Nevada, there will be a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain," Pope said, referring to the mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the U.S. Department of Energy was ordered by Congress to study as the only location in the nation for a nuclear dump.

"This guy can't stand up to Trent Lott," Pope said.

Lott fears that if Nevada's Yucca Mountain is found unsuitable, the salt domes underlying Mississippi and Louisiana will become the target for burying 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from commercial reactors and defense sites, Pope said.

It was Louisiana's Bennett Johnston who singled out Yucca Mountain as the sole site when he was the senator from Louisiana, because his state was a prime location for burying nuclear wastes.

"And getting rid of Harry Reid is exactly what Lott needs," Pope said.

But Ensign's camp said the Republican representative stood up to GOP leadership this summer when he went to House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich and pulled a temporary nuclear waste storage bill off the calendar.

Ensign also canceled a fund-raising visit to Las Vegas later this month by Lott and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who co-authored a temporary nuclear waste storage bill in the last two congressional sessions.

The two pro-nuclear dump senators were supposed to attend a "Singing Senators" event in Las Vegas Friday, but Ensign said he asked them not to attend "because of their stance on the nuclear waste issue."

Lott has recently said he can push through nuclear waste legislation if he gets enough GOP seats in the Senate. And he complained in a recent article that "Many of our most important initiatives -- from product liability to nuclear waste disposal -- have been thwarted by a talkathon by the left." The article appeared in The National Conservative Weekly.

In turn, Ensign challenged Reid to return donations he got from Johnston and nuclear allies, a total of $4,500.

Reid's camp countered that Ensign has received about $48,000 from the current Senate leaders who favor a nuclear dump in Nevada.