Reid calls for another Yucca hearing

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Friday, Sept. 7, 2001 | 11:10 a.m.

The Energy Department should hold at least one additional public hearing in Las Vegas on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste plan, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., today wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

Reid planned to send the letter today.

Reid wrote that the first of three planned hearings in Nevada held Wednesday -- a tense, 8 1/2-hour meeting -- did not allow residents a fair chance to speak, Reid spokesman Nathan Naylor said today.

Reid also planned to write that Abraham's absence was "conspicuous." Reid had invited him. Abraham had cited a scheduling conflict.

"I hope to get the entire delegation to ask Abraham for a full day of hearings," Reid said. "Why not hold hearings over a day, or even extend them over several days so more people can be heard?"

As it stands, the DOE plans two more hearings Sept. 12 in Amargosa Valley and Sept. 13 in Pahrump, both from 5 to 9 p.m. The DOE is accepting written public comments until Oct. 5.

But Reid wants a fourth hearing, possibly over two days, again held in Las Vegas.

Nevada's four-member delegation is still fuming over the DOE-hosted Wednesday meeting that stretched past 2 a.m.

The meeting at the DOE's Nevada Operations Office in North Las Vegas attracted more than 500 residents, and 133 testified.

Nevada officials said the hearing was a debacle because so many people did not get to speak. About 100 people left by 10 p.m. because they would not be heard before midnight. Nevada officials objected to pro-Yucca speakers, some from out of state, speaking early, taking up the time of anti-Yucca Nevada residents.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., today said the Department of Energy, which manages the proposed Yucca project, should hold 10 meetings in Nevada and extend the comment period 60 days or more.

"Nevadans need to be heard on this issue," Gibbons said.

At issue is the controversial, DOE-managed plan to begin burying the nation's high-level nuclear waste -- 77,000 tons -- at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, by 2010 at the earliest. The plan has not been approved by the president, Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Nevada officials oppose the Yucca plan. Clark County officials helped get people to the meeting with free shuttle buses that left the Clark County Government Center. The buses returned at about 10 p.m., one reason some people left early.

Many people signed up to speak after they arrived. The speakers who spoke first had called in to get on the speaker's list by using a 1-800-number that appeared in newspaper advertisements about the meeting.

Six of the first nine speakers favored the plan to bury waste in Nevada.

"When I look back at the testimony provided, I found it quite odd that of the first nine people to speak, six were in favor of Yucca Mountain," Gibbons said.

"I have never been to a town hall meetings in Nevada where two-thirds of the people were in favor of Yucca Mountain."

Two Yucca proponents who spoke were Rod McCullum, a project manager for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top lobby group, and Utah Prof. Gary Sandquist, who NEI asked to speak on its behalf. Sandquist paid his own way to the hearing, he said. Jerry Kuhaida, mayor of Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the DOE built nuclear weapons during the Cold War, also spoke in favor of the repository.

"We believe that we have a right to be participants in the political process just as the residents of Nevada obviously do," NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes said today. "We're living by the same rules as everybody else."

The NEI believes Yucca Mountain is suitable to accept commercial spent fuel from 103 reactors across the country, McCullum said. Thousands of scientists -- "the most credible minds we have" -- have studied Yucca Mountain for 20 years, he said.

Radiation levels from the buried waste would be equal to that incurred from eating 20 bananas a year or flying from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, he said.

"Your tourist industry will not suffer," McCullum said. "That is a myth. Yucca Mountain is the right thing to do. It is the responsible thing to do."

Loud hisses and boos from the crowd drowned out further comments by McCullum.

Five hours into the hearing just 36 people -- many of whom were elected officials -- had used their allotted five minutes to express concerns about the controversial repository project.

Reid on Thursday also sent a letter to President Bush urging him to send Abraham to one of the Nevada meetings.

"The hearing last night was a poor attempt to gauge public sentiment in Nevada regarding the proposed Yucca Mountain repository," Reid wrote to Bush, noting the meeting site was hard to access, a gauntlet of guards and fences intimidated those trying to reach the hearing, and facilities were crammed with waiting speakers.

The DOE already has extended the comment period to Oct. 5, a 15-day extension. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., called that "a joke." She said the comment period should be lengthened as long as it takes to hold "the maximum number of hearings possible."

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he would like to have another hearing in Las Vegas after the DOE releases key reports, such as a final environmental impact statement; detailed, finalized transportation routes; and the findings of Inspector General's investigations into whether a law firm hired by the DOE to review Yucca paperwork had a conflict of interest by also acting as a paid lobbyist for NEI.

"I think all of us feel that the DOE has been completely biased in everything it has done up to the point that the people in the state of Nevada don't trust them, and for good reason," Ensign said.

Lake Barrett, acting director of the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, listened to testimonials through the night without saying a word. DOE officials typically do not comment during public hearings.

"It was a very interesting hearing," he said as he dashed through sliding glass doors at the North Las Vegas building, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

Also among those in attendance at the meeting was former Gov. Robert List, hired last month by NEI as a consultant to work with Nevada businesses and labor unions. List said he does not want a Yucca repository, unless it is proven scientifically safe.

However, if the nuclear waste comes to Nevada, officials should at least talk about benefits, he said.

List said he had not made any arrangements between NEI and any of the pro-repository speakers.

"I'm hear to listen," he said before Wednesday's hearing.