Nader: Keep nuke waste at plants

Friday, Sept. 15, 2000 | 10:50 a.m.

Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader has been opposed to nuclear power and its trail of highly radioactive waste since before Vice President Al Gore was first elected to the House in 1976.

So it was no surprise today when Nader, speaking at a rally at the UNLV Moyer Student Union, called for leaving the nuclear garbage where it is stored at 73 power plants instead of shipping 77,000 tons of it to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of where he was speaking.

Yucca Mountain is a sensitive political issue in Nevada, Nader's state campaign coordinator Linda Henry said before his 11 a.m. speech.

"It's going to be a major issue in Nevada for the November election," Henry said. "It's what everybody asks me: 'What's his stand on Yucca Mountain?' "

As a consumer advocate well known for his stance on auto safety, Nader became active in opposing all things nuclear in the early 1970s.

As founder of the consumer advocate group Public Citizen in 1971, Nader kept asking the questions: Where does the nuclear waste go? How do you transport the waste? How do you develop security around a nuclear power plant? Why does it cost so much?

There were no answers from the federal government then and there are no answers now, he said.

Since the federal government is not allowing scientists independent from the Department of Energy and the nuclear industry to sign off on a Yucca repository, Nader said he's against it.

How to deal with the waste is a question that won't be answered for the next 10 years or so, until technology catches up, Nader said. The easiest solution is to quit producing radioactive wastes and move from nuclear power to solar energy.

His opposition to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain is based on the lack of sufficient scientific studies by the DOE, earthquake hazards (Nevada ranks third behind California and Alaska for quakes) and unacceptable radiation exposures, Nader said.

Temporary storage isn't much of an option, either, he said.

Nader doesn't like dry cask storage, already approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to keep radioactive spent fuel out of the environment at reactor sites.

Instead, he believes the spent nuclear fuel rods should be left in storage at the individual reactor sites.

Nader blames the press, Congress and the Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor to the DOE, for promoting nuclear power.

It wasn't until the Three Mile Island near-meltdown in Pennsylvania that the press and the public woke up, Nader said.

Before Nader spoke, Western Shoshone elder and spiritual leader Corbin Harney expressed his concerns about federal plans for burying nuclear waste at Yucca, a mountain claimed by the tribe as a sacred site.

"We have one water, one air and one Mother Earth," Harney said. "We must take care of it all."