Editorial: So much for having Bush’s ear

Friday, May 4, 2001 | 4:12 a.m.

The state's top Republican politicians, in the closing weeks of the 2000 presidential election, assured Nevadans that they needn't worry. Despite the red flags raised by the Texas governor's many ties to the nuclear power industry, Gov. Kenny Guinn, U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons and U.S. Senate candidate John Ensign all oozed confidence that George W. Bush would listen to our concerns about nuclear waste storage in Nevada, giving this state a fair shake. But Bush isn't even four months into his four-year term, and already there are disturbing signs that the new team in the White House isn't paying heed to Nevada's worries on this critical issue to the state.

The administration is anything but shy about the prospect of sending 77,000 tons of man's deadliest waste to a repository just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It's not helpful that Vice President Dick Cheney is using the power crisis to revive the moribund nuclear power industry, whether it's bringing old plants out of mothballs or building new facilities. The administration's love affair with nuclear power, in turn, has emboldened the industry and its supporters in Congress to step up their calls for the burial of nuclear waste inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

In one particularly ominous sign last week, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham himself stressed the link between a repository and the need for more nuclear power. Before this industry can expand, Abraham said, a permanent repository must be approved. "First and foremost, we have to deal with the issue of nuclear waste," Abraham said. But the obsession to quickly get more nuclear power plants up and running -- and the fact that Yucca Mountain is the only site under consideration to store nuclear waste -- is causing concern that Bush will not honor his campaign pledge to let "sound science" decide Yucca Mountain's fate.

Overall the administration's emerging energy policy has been marked by its indifference -- if not outright hostility -- to the environment. The administration's belief that environmentally sensitive public lands, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, should be open for oil and natural gas drilling is symptomatic of its willingness to do whatever big energy companies want -- even if these polluting industries will endanger the environment or the public's health and safety, as is also the case with Yucca Mountain.

The White House energy task force has not issued its final recommendations on a national energy strategy, so there still is time to make changes. At this point it doesn't appear possible that the White House will reverse its misguided advocacy of more nuclear power plants, but Bush should shoot down the argument that more nuclear power presages a need to hasten the opening of a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Instead of burying waste at such a geologically hazardous site as Yucca Mountain, the waste should be left at the power plants where it's been residing safely while alternative technologies are explored to render the waste less harmful.

Repository opponents who encouraged Nevadans to vote for Bush -- such as Guinn, Gibbons, Ensign and an assortment of other influential Republicans -- should bluntly let the president know that aggressively moving forward on Yucca Mountain not only would be scientifically disingenuous, but that it also would run the risk of incurring the permanent enmity of Nevadans. Such a course would be viewed as a betrayal of this state's residents, who narrowly elected Bush after he matched the Nevada-friendly positions on nuclear waste storage that Democrat Al Gore had staked out. If Bush puts nuclear waste storage in Nevada on a fast-track, it would be tantamount to a scorched-earth policy.