Editorial: Say it ain’t so, George W.

Thursday, Jan. 4, 2001 | 9:49 a.m.

Most of the names that had been floated for secretary of energy in a Bush administration had terrified Nevadans. At the top of the list was former Democratic Sen. Bennett Johnston, author of the "Screw Nevada" legislation that limited the study of a high-level nuclear waste repository to Nevada. Also sending shivers down the spines of Nevadans as a potential secretary of energy was Thomas Kuhn, who runs the Edison Electric Institute, a group of utilities that favors storing nuclear waste in Nevada. Then George W. Bush settled on Spencer Abraham, the Michigan Republican who recently lost his re-election bid to the U.S. Senate.

As a U.S. senator, Abraham didn't maintain the same high profile on nuclear waste storage as Johnston once did or even match Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has taken Johnston's place as the nuclear industry's point man in Congress. Murkowski, who also is a key energy adviser to Bush, wants man's deadliest waste stored in Nevada come hell or high water. But don't be fooled into thinking that the relatively mild-mannered Abraham has an open mind on this issue. Not only has he received a huge amount of campaign contributions from the nuclear power industry, but Abraham also consistently has advocated sending nuclear waste to Nevada. Michigan has four nuclear power reactors, so Abraham has shared that state's damn-the-torpedoes attitude to the disposal of nuclear waste, a philosophy that pays no heed to critical safety issues.

So what are Bush's high-ranking Nevada Republican supporters saying about Abraham's appointment? Gov. Kenny Guinn said he was confident that Abraham "will continue the position of President-elect Bush to base any decision on nuclear waste storage on science rather than political expediency." Rep. Jim Gibbons said he believed Abraham would stand by Bush's promise to rely on radiation standards for a repository established by the Environmental Protection Agency, not the incredibly lax standards suggested by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But these statements show the credulity of these Nevadans, especially since the incoming president has surrounded himself with advisers -- both in and out of government -- who are joined at the hip with the nuclear power industry.

It also didn't help matters that during the campaign Bush was reluctant to publicly detail his stands on nuclear waste storage. It was only months after the Nevada media's persistent questioning -- and just a couple of weeks before Election Day -- that the Republican ticket finally said that, like the Clinton administration, it also would fight Congress' efforts to weaken radiation standards for a repository. This belated promise was par for the course for the Bush team, which always -- after the fact -- managed to match Al Gore's Nevada-friendly views on nuclear waste storage.

Nevadans understandably are worried about the incoming Republican administration, since it was a GOP-controlled Congress that last year came within a whisker of getting legislation passed that would have guaranteed that nuclear waste would have been sent to this state. It was only President Clinton's willingness to veto this legislation that prevented this specter from becoming a reality. A Republican in the White House with ties to the nuclear power industry certainly will embolden members of Congress with pro-industry sentiments to push Bush to accept legislation that would immediately send nuclear waste to Nevada. Despite assurances to the contrary by top Nevada Republicans, Bush's selection of Abraham is a harbinger of trouble ahead. On nuclear waste storage, at least, Nevada's views could be greeted icily by this administration.