Ferraro receives Berkley barrage

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2001 | 8:34 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Shortly after Geraldine Ferraro agreed to lead a national lobby campaign on behalf of the Yucca Mountain project, she received a phone call from an irked Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

Ferraro expected it.

"She's a friend of mine," Ferraro said in an interview with the Sun. "I felt terrible. It pained me to be on the opposite side of an issue from her. But as I said to her, we've got to move this (nuclear waste). It's a matter of the public health and safety of people throughout this country."

Ferraro, who in 1984 was the first woman vice presidential candidate, turned a few heads inside the Democratic Party -- mostly in Nevada -- when she signed on with former President Bush chief of staff John Sununu to lead a Yucca lobby campaign sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Yucca Mountain is the proposed site of the nation's first high-level nuclear waste burial ground and is fiercely opposed by Nevada officials. The U.S. Chamber launched a public relations offensive on Nov. 15 to urge Congress and President Bush to move the project forward.

Ferraro said Sununu, a political opposite but longtime friend and former CNN "Crossfire" co-host, gradually recruited her to help him lead the Chamber effort. Ferraro said she agreed after conversations with him about national security.

Ferraro said she had never been a nuclear industry advocate and would not have accepted the pro-Yucca lobby job before Sept. 11.

But since terrorist attacks in her home state, the former New York congresswoman has come to believe that nuclear waste should be buried in a central location far underground -- not stored in above-ground containers and in cooling pools at nuclear plants nationwide, she said. New York has six nuclear plant reactors.

Ferraro added she would be "screaming and yelling" to stop Yucca if she represented Nevada.

"I can understand the perspective of people in Nevada," Ferraro said. "They don't want it in their back yard. I don't blame them. But what are you going to do?"

Ferraro said she was being paid for her pro-Yucca efforts for the Chamber, but she would not say how much.

Ferraro, 66, is a consultant with Golin Harris McGinn, an international public relations firm. Ferraro, who in June announced she was successfully battling cancer with the controversial drug thalidomide, has been U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, a Georgetown University teacher, political pundit, author, lecturer and New York Times columnist.

Berkley said she had a "spirited" conversation with Ferraro during the phone call and explained Nevada's objections to the Yucca plan. Berkley told Ferraro that burying waste in Nevada is not a good way to reduce terrorism risks at nuclear power plants nationwide.

Nuclear reactors would be terrorist targets with or without waste, Nevada lawmakers have argued. Nevada lawmakers say trucks and trains hauling waste to Nevada, as well as the Yucca site itself, also offer terrorists more targets.

"If she is losing sleep, believe me, I am losing more sleep over having this (waste) in my back yard," Berkley said.