Platform backs nuclear storage

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2000 | 11:10 a.m.

PHILADELPHIA -- As Nevada's Republican congressional candidates were on the floor at the Republican National Convention on Monday blasting a plan to bury nuclear waste in Nevada, party leaders were officially embracing the plan.

"Look to technology instead of politics to solve our nation's waste problem and rest assured that as a Republican, I will fight every day in the United States Senate to keep deadly nuclear waste out of my home state," Senate hopeful John Ensign thundered during a three-minute speech to a small and docile audience on the convention floor.

As Ensign and House contender Jon Porter spoke Monday, the Republican Party platform committee was approving a plank that slammed President Clinton for blocking a plan to bury high-level radioactive material in Nevada.

"The current administration has turned its back on the two sources that provide virtually all of the nation's emission-free power: nuclear and hydro," the platform says.

Just a few hours later, the entire party represented by delegates from every state on a voice vote officially approved the platform, a 73-page statement of positions on critical national issues.

At issue is a federal plan to bury up to 77,000 tons of the nation's nuclear waste -- now stored at nuclear power plants and defense sites nationwide -- in caverns underneath Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Nevada's delegation in Congress has battled the plan, which scientists have not yet deemed a safe proposal. The mountain has been under extensive study by the Department of Energy since 1987.

Clinton this year rejected a Congress-approved bill that would have sped up a timeline for shipments of waste hauled by truck and train to Nevada.

"Meanwhile," the Republican platform says, "nuclear plants are choking on waste because the current administration breached its contract to remove it -- and then vetoed legislation to store it at a safe, permanent repository for which the taxpayers had already paid $7 billion," referring to Yucca Mountain.

While the platform takes Clinton to task, it does not specifically mention Yucca Mountain, or specifically call for waste burial there.

The platform outlines nine components of a National Energy Security Act, including a call for more domestic supplies of coal, oil and natural gas -- but it does not include a nuclear power provision.

"I wouldn't say that the platform is Nevada specific at all," said Lynette Boggs McDonald, Las Vegas city councilwoman and the only Nevada representative who served on the platform committee that created the platform language.

Boggs McDonald said Yucca Mountain was never referred to during the committee's meetings here Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

"I sat through every single plank and never was there a mention of Nevada, as in 'We need to get this (waste) to Nevada,' " Boggs McDonald said.

Boggs McDonald said the reference to the "permanent repository" was made as part of a larger criticism of Clinton's energy policy and a call for a comprehensive new energy strategy.

"If this was a big priority of the GOP, it would have been an action item: store nuclear waste in Nevada," Boggs McDonald said. "And that's not in there."

Still, Nevada Republican delegates stressed their opposition to the platform language.

"John just fundamentally disagrees with it," said Nevada delegate Pete Ernaut, campaign adviser to Ensign. "(The platform) reinforces the argument on why we need a Republican in the Senate as badly as we do. There's no one else to take up the fight on our side in the Senate."

Porter said, "Again, I'm disagreeing with any members of Congress in either party who want to put nuclear waste in Nevada. I stood up and told America Nevada will not accept that."

Several Democrats said the GOP platform speaks volumes.

"(Ensign's) rhetoric about nuclear waste flies in the face of his brethren in the party," Ensign opponent Ed Bernstein said Monday.

"Congresswoman Berkley is tremendously disappointed that the Republicans would adopt a pro-Yucca plank in its platform," said Michael O'Donovan, spokesman for Porter's incumbent opponent, Shelley Berkley.

Nevada state Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio sounded a note of exasperation: "We can't make it clear enough that we all agree in Nevada on that situation."

In other action on the platform committee, Boggs McDonald said she urged fellow committeewoman Cheryl Williams of Oklahoma to back off a plank that called for a ban on betting on college athletics, a position that mirrors a bill pending in Congress. The bill would hurt Nevada casinos.

"I was able to get the language watered down," Boggs McDonald said. She met with Williams privately and the two worked out a compromise that said, "Millions of Americans suffer from problem or pathological gambling that can destroy families. We support legislation prohibiting gambling over the Internet or in student athletics by student athletes who are participating in competitive sports."