Columnist Jon Ralston: Too many dots will dash state’s hopes

Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2001 | 9:32 a.m.

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

SO WHAT does California's power crisis and electric deregulation have to do with Yucca Mountain?

Maybe everything.

Consider a couple of recent statements:

The first quote comes courtesy of Frank Murkowksi in an interview this week with the Los Angeles Times -- Murkowski is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is about to introduce a bill that, in part, is designed to jump-start the nuclear power industry.

The second quote is an excerpt from a speech this month by Tom Kuhn, the president of the Edison Electric Institute, a key backer of nuclear waste storage in Nevada who also happens to be an intimate of President Bush.

What does this mean?

It means, folks, that there is a revival being pushed by many in Congress, especially Republicans. And it is a revival of an old-time religion known as nuclear power. And more nuclear power begets more nuclear waste to be deposited on an altar about 90 miles away from Sin City. The only question remaining is whether the high priest of this new religion is named Bush, and whether he will give his blessing to Yucca Mountain.

Sacramento Bee science writer Edie Lau captured the dynamic this week, too, in a piece that began: "America's appetite for electricity -- highlighted by California's energy crunch -- is driving an interest in nuclear power to heights not seen in nearly a generation.

"For the first time since the 1970s, a utility company is talking with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about building new units somewhere in the United States, using a design completely different from plants anywhere else in the world.

"At the same time, senators in Washington, D.C., are drafting legislation to promote the development of nuclear power."

So let's try to understand this and connect the dots:

Dot 1: The president's pal and allies in Congress want to bow to the nuclear power industry, which is taking advantage of the electricity crisis to promote itself.

Dot 2: Republicans control Congress and the White House.

Dot 3: Some Democrats like nuclear power, too, and a lot of them like the idea of getting nuclear waste out of their districts.

Dot 4: Murkowski and Co. are about to introduce their nuclear power cheerleading bill, and House dump advocate Joe Barton is threatening to resurrect a repository sect known as the Interim Storage Movement.

Dot 5: We are supposed to believe that Bush, who has been mum on these issues, is a political ventriloquist -- that his Nevada puppets, in the form of Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. John Ensign and Rep. Jim Gibbons, are speaking for him when they have promised that Bush is there for the state.

You can talk about ad campaigns to scare other states about transportation.

You can use all the fornication metaphors you can create. And you can talk about lying in front of trains, suing the federal government and never, ever surrendering.

But what you can't escape is the picture created when you connect those dots: It looks a lot like a nuclear waste dump, about 90 miles from here.

And what you can't escape is the only course left to the state and its politicians who have fought and postured for so long, only to witness the revival of this old-time religion: Start praying.