Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Nuclear confrontation

Friday, April 19, 2002 | 5:03 a.m.

AM I STILL STANDING?

By the time you read this I will have already taped an appearance opposite former governor Bob List for a half-hour debate about Yucca Mountain on "This Week in Las Vegas." (This is being written Thursday night, we taped the show Friday morning, and it will air on Channel 3 tonight at 7.) So much for up-to-the-minute news!

The real issue, of course, is not whether I am still standing after the public sees the show, but whether I was competent enough to make the case that needs to be made against a highly paid lobbyist for the nuclear power industry. That's what List is these days, a hired gun whose mission it is to soften up Nevadans to the point that they will give up their hopes, dreams and futures for an empty promise of things that will never come.

For the record, I am not getting paid one cent for fighting President George W. Bush's decision to help his friends in the power industry make many more millions by shipping 77,000 tons of radioactive waste to a dumpsite just outside Las Vegas. In fact, like many good-hearted and sensible Nevadans, this fight is costing me and my family many dollars as we support our senators and our governor in this fight to stop the madness.

Whatever we spend, though, and I hope all other Nevadans -- except List, of course -- feel the same way, it pales in comparison to what we may lose if those trucks and trains start rolling our way with thousands of loads of deadly waste for years and years to come.

Not only will we lose years of financial investment, we will lose something much more dear. Over one and a half million people have chosen to make their homes in Las Vegas. If President Bush gets his way, some or many of those people who have called this place home for a long or short period of time, will have to make an awful decision. And that is, do we stay or do we go?

I already know what my decision is, and I know others are struggling right now with the kind of oppression by a federal government that cares not one whit about whether or not we want to live in a place which the government will now make unsafe.

This is not one of those national security decisions or other efforts that have a certain glamour to them. This is about billions of dollars for the big boys and nothing more. All Nevada represents is a quick and dirty alternative, albeit a dangerous one, to a 21st century scientific solution for a national problem. Like most other things, it is all about money and the lives we will trade so others can get it.

The truth of the matter is that no one has any idea what this whole thing may cost because nobody has a crystal ball. At least one that works. That is why the government and its puppeteers in the nuke waste business have hired List, to make sure Nevadans give up the fight before we learn whatever truth there is to know.

Well, I know two irrefutable facts.

Yucca Mountain is not a safe geological storage site for nuclear waste or any other kind of waste because it sits in the middle of one of the most active earthquake zones in the country.

Of the thousands of trucks and trains that will roll through American cities on their way to Las Vegas, some of them will get into accidents and some of those will spill their deadly cargoes.

The question remains: Where will you be when that spill happens? Will you be in New York? In St Louis? How about Denver, or Salt Lake City or Los Angeles? Or, how about making your way through the Spaghetti Bowl after work when one of those big rigs turns over and spills 10,000 years of death and destruction into downtown Las Vegas?

Or what about the next earthquake? A few years ago there was a 5.6 shaker just a few miles from Yucca, but it did enough damage to the DOE site that it made the scientists take notice. That's about when the politicians decided to ignore science and risk the world on the next roll.

Can you imagine a 7.0 earthquake near Yucca Mountain? Not only would the Strip hotels sway to and fro, but the water table would gobble up the plutonium canisters and spread their death throughout this part of the world. Yes, that can happen, and if history is any guide, it will happen.

Where will List and his benefactors be when it comes time to clean up the mess? Bury the dead? Care for the sick and dying? I know they are paying him a lot of money, but it can't be so much that it allows him and his conscience to hide forever, can it?

So I hope I will have done the job that needs to be done tonight. We must get past the fairy tale the nuclear industry is telling about gold at the end of the rainbow for those of us who will just give up. Because if we give up, all we will get is what we deserve.

And, believe me, Nevadans are not the people who deserve that kind of misery.

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