Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Keeping vigil vs. nukes

Tuesday, March 16, 1999 | 12:22 p.m.

THE NUCLEAR power industry isn't happy. That should be good news for Nevada.

But, as long as the focus of the nuclear waste kings is to bury their radioactive problems just a few miles north of Las Vegas and as long as the Congress of these United States is willing to do whatever its powerful sponsors want, then there is little reason to find much joy. There is, however, plenty of reason to be encouraged that someday, somehow this feeling of being put upon by the rest of America will go the way of other monumentally bad ideas that have worked their way through the Congressional labyrinth only to die a legislatively tawdry death.

The reason for encouragement comes in the person of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. Secretary Richardson in another life was an outspoken congressman from New Mexico, which is a state that has experienced its own hell at the hands of the nuke industry. If ever there was a how-to book on what to do wrong in the nuke waste business, it could have been written in New Mexico. Unfortunately, the opposition learned from its mistakes and has worked hard these past few years to ruin the rest of Nevada's life.

Of course, Nevadans know a bad deal when they see it and from the start of Congress' efforts on behalf of its power company puppeteers to bury the nation's headache in our backyard we have not been fooled. Unfortunately, as is often the case in the sausage-making milieu of legislating, many in Congress have been too willing to follow their leaders rather than think through the consequences of their ill-conceived actions. They have also been far too willing to try to make this national problem "go away" by accepting burial in Nevada's desert -- a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem -- as the easiest and most politically expedient method available.

What nobody really counted on two decades ago when the political types dreamed up this end run around good science was the resolve of Nevada's mothers and fathers to protect their state and their families from the ravages of high-level nuclear waste and centuries, perhaps millenia, of nothing but heartache and bad health. Nevadans have been the only ones, until recently, to stand shoulder to shoulder to face the economic behemoth called the nuclear power industry and the political monolith known as Congressional intent, whose goal it has been to shove this rotten poison so far into Nevada that the rest of the country will never notice it again. As far as we are concerned, the political calculation was made years ago and Nevadans lost.

In the past six years, though, we have gained a champion. Coupled with the very astute political maneuvering of Sen. Richard Bryan and the deft contributions of our senior senator, Harry Reid, our congressional delegation has been able to stem the tide of inevitability far beyond what people would have thought possible just a decade ago. We have been joined in that effort by President Bill Clinton, whose promised veto of the temporary nuke waste bill is the only thing that has stood between us in Nevada and potential disaster. In 1992, as candidate Clinton, he made a promise that science and not politics would drive the decision about what to do with the national problem of high-level nuclear waste. And he has kept that promise.

But that has not stopped the Republican-led effort in Congress to make good on its own commitments to the monied and powerful nuclear lobby to make Nevada swallow the medicine no other state wants. To be fair, both Democrats and Republicans, most of whom have reactors in their own states, supported the early "Screw-Nevada" bills which singled our state out as the sole survivor in the who-will-get-dumped-upon sweepstakes. Lately, though, it is the GOP-dominated Senate and House which keep pushing for a bill that would place tons of nuclear waste "temporarily" at the Nevada Test Site. Everyone knows, however, that in this case temporary means permanent.

Secretary Richardson last week offered a very reasonable solution to the problem at hand. Since there are some 72 reactor sites in 33 states filling up with spent fuel rods with no place to go, the secretary agreed that the federal government would accept responsibility for the storage of that waste --that means the cost and the liability -- as long as the high-level waste stays where it is. In short, science has a way to store the radioactive waste on site, safely, for decades. This solution prevents the need to ship thousands of tons of nuclear garbage through cities and towns across the country on the way to the Nevada desert. It also takes the economic burden away from electrical ratepayers and the companies themselves.

It sounds too good to be true. It is true but not good enough for the utilities which are pushing the Nevada solution. The obvious question is why?

The best I can figure is that the people who have benefitted from the cheaper, more efficient nuclear power have been told for years that the specter of nuclear disaster --that's the spent fuel rods hanging around the reactor sites -- will be out of sight and, therefore, out of mind in a few short years. They've been told that for decades. How will it look for the utilities to go to the people now and say, "oops, it may be a few more decades before we remove this stuff." That's called a public relations debacle.

There's another, more insidious reason, I suspect why the power companies don't want to accept what is a most reasonable solution to a very unreasonable problem. And that is money.

The multibillion-dollar power industry has already determined that the near-term future of nuclear power in this country is bleak at best. With just a few years left --count them in the tens -- of the useful lives of the power plants in operation, the big boys are looking to rid themselves of these "depreciating assets." There are buyers out there known as alternative providers or smaller players who can purchase the plants and stretch out as long as possible the profit-making lives of the nuclear reactors.

But the big boys cannot sell as long as the specter of on-site storage continues to loom large over the health and safety concerns of the residents. The public will not stand for it when the requests are made to extend the useful lives and the buyers will not accept the terms of payment unless they get the concessions needed. The publicity that would ensue --the kind that usually precedes the disaster movies in our nation's theaters -- is definitely not helpful for the expected return of capital the nuclear power titans expect to receive.

So, try they must to continue the pressure to force Nevadans to live with the deadly substances no one else wants. So continue, we must, to support those political leaders who continue to act in our best interests. Be they Republicans or Democrats, radioactive poison knows no labels. Only the voters do. Right now it is Bill Richardson and Bill Clinton who are doing right by Nevada and the GOP leaders in the House and Senate who are doing wrong. Would that things could be different.

But they are not so there is no reason for joy. Just vigilance.

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