Yucca tours seen as lobbying efforts

Benjamin Grove

Friday, March 23, 2001 | 5:13 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Energy Department officials at Yucca Mountain last year played host to 4,200 visitors who toured the proposed nuclear waste dump.

But the DOE, which by law is required to maintain a neutral stance on the controversial project, won't disclose the identities of people who trekked to the desert for any of the tours.

The department manages ongoing studies and site preparation at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and has led most of the hard-hat tours inside the mountain's tunnel.

In a few other cases, the nuclear power industry's top lobby group hosted federal and state politicians on trips to Las Vegas for Yucca tours. Critics say those trips offered "propaganda" -- biased visions of the site's ability to safely store 77,000 tons of the nation's nuclear waste.

While a Yucca guest list offers a telling sample of the varied interests that have a stake in the project, disclosing the names of tourists is illegal, DOE officials said.

"That information is protected by the privacy act," DOE spokeswoman Jacqueline Johnson said in Washington.

However, the identity of Yucca visitors is not a complete mystery. Some of them brag about their trips.

Georgia Rep. Sue Burmeister took a two-night trip to Yucca in December with a group of lawmakers from Michigan and South Carolina -- a trip paid for by the nuclear power industry's top lobby group, the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Upon her return, she promptly penned a letter to her hometown newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle, praising Yucca as a safe site for the nation's nuclear waste, specifically the spent uranium fuel from nuclear reactors in her state. Her husband is an engineer at the Vogtle nuclear plant near their home.

"Yucca Mountain and the Yucca Mountain Project are located approximately 100 miles from Las Vegas in the most desolate place I have ever seen," Burmeister wrote in the January letter. "There is nothing there except rocks, dirt, sagebrush and tumbleweed."

Several people wrote responses, criticizing Burmeister for suggesting that Nevada is a desolate patch of desert. Burmeister said they had misunderstood her.

"I think the desert is gorgeous," Burmeister told the Sun. "I love Las Vegas, but I felt as though it would be a very safe site. My whole reason for going out there was for my own knowledge and to better represent the nuclear industry. We went out there already pro-nuclear, so to speak. It really reinforced my opinion that where we should go in this country is with nuclear energy."

That kind of publicity is important to the NEI. The lobby pays for about six trips a year to Yucca for federal and state lawmakers from areas that rely on nuclear power, NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes said.

NEI officials hope the Republican president and Republican-controlled Congress this year will spur the Yucca Mountain project toward completion.

"We think it makes perfect sense to be able to go to the site and see what the issues are and talk first-hand with the scientists and the geologists who work there," Kerekes said.

Kerekes said NEI does not encourage state lawmakers to actively lobby when they return.

"That's up to them to do what they see fit with the information," he said.

South Carolina Rep. Charles Sharpe, R-Aiken, also went on the NEI-paid trip to Yucca in December.

Sharpe, who represents a district that includes the DOE's Savannah River site, which stores and handles government nuclear wastes, said he was concerned the DOE had not yet finished "fighting the state of Nevada" and obtained a permit to dump the South Carolina waste at Yucca.

"I wanted to make sure we were on track to move the stuff," Sharpe said. "It was worth the trip because now we can at least tell the people in our state that the federal government is moving in the right direction. I think the federal government has dragged its feet long enough."

Sharpe added that they stayed in an inexpensive Las Vegas hotel.

"There wasn't any games or shows or nothing," Sharpe said. "It was strictly a business trip."

Other clues about Yucca visitors are found in weekly status reports sent from the DOE's Las Vegas office to headquarters in Washington, which routinely list tour groups -- without names.

The Sun obtained the reports from the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state's DOE watchdog office, which also get copies.

The reports show that diverse organizations go to Yucca for tours: curious Nevadans, nuclear-industry executives, media, politicians, church groups, highway patrol officers, hobbyists.

"It's very much a worthwhile trip," said John Wirtz, a Nevada organizer of Sam's Radio Hams, a 87-rig group of recreational vehicle and amateur radio operators who travel the Southwest. The group toured Yucca this month.

"It's very impressive -- the magnitude of it. It's just enormous, and it's still really just in the testing phase," Wirtz said.

Congress in 1987 launched DOE studies at Yucca Mountain to determine if it is a safe place to construct an underground burial site for high-level radioactive waste. The DOE spent $6.7 billion as of September on the $58 billion project.

Nuclear industry officials say Yucca is the key to their future. Utilities can no longer afford to store the waste at their plants.

Nevada lawmakers say the site threatens human health, the environment and the economy.

Tour groups range widely in their opinions of the project, DOE spokeswoman Gayle Fisher said. In a given week, DOE officials may host both vehement anti-Yucca activists and supportive nuclear-industry officials, she said.

During a four-week period in February and March, DOE led 296 people in 17 groups through the tunnel and to the top of the mountain, according to reports. The groups included representatives from the Churchill County Planning Commission, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which produces sophisticated intelligence information to the nation's military, and University of Iowa geology students.

"We'll give anyone a tour," Fisher said.

The daylong tours, which usually run four days a week, are coordinated to not interfere with ongoing work inside the mountain, Fisher said. DOE's tour budget was $280,000 last year, which includes two full-time staffers who schedule and organize the trips.

"We feel it's important to let people know about (Yucca) if they are interested," Fisher said.

Prominent Yucca tourists include Gov. Kenny Guinn, the first sitting governor to visit the site. He toured Yucca last year and said the trip emboldened his opposition to it. Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera visited the site this month with other county officials.

"Part of their strategy, from the moment you arrive at the visitors center, is to make this look like a foregone conclusion," Herrera said. "Obviously, I don't think that's the case at all."

But the tours also are informative and offer a valuable up-close look at the site, many agree. Even Herrera recommends the tour.

What has many Nevada officials worried are the Nuclear Energy Institute-sponsored trips.

"They're propaganda tours," Herrera said.

When asked, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects technicians accompany visitors on tours to offer an anti-project perspective, agency director Bob Loux said. But when Loux has offered to tag along on NEI tours, officials decline, he said.

Kerekes also declined to say who NEI hosted on recent trips.

Some are members of Congress or congressional staffers, according to trip records filed in the House and Senate. Last year NEI spent about $4,200 for trips for four House staffers who work for lawmakers on the House Energy Committee.