Sununu ‘very impressed’ with work done at Yucca

Friday, Feb. 15, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

Former White House chief of staff John Sununu said Thursday he was "very impressed" with work being done at Yucca Mountain and was pleased that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended the site as the nation's nuclear waste repository.

Sununu and former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who both took a daylong tour of the site, were hired by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year to promote the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as a repository.

President Bush could accept Abraham's recommendation as early as today.

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which has severed ties with the national organization over the Yucca issue, wasn't notified of the pair's plan to tour the facility, said Catherine Levy, director of media relations.

On Jan. 31 of last year the local chamber passed a resolution that "expresses its strong opposition" to storing nuclear waste in Nevada.

Abraham toured Yucca Mountain in January and, just three days later, notified Gov. Kenny Guinn of his intentions to recommend the site to Bush, who met with members of Nevada's congressional delegation last week.

Sununu, a former governor of New Hampshire, and Ferraro said 293 unanswered questions of science -- which must be answered before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses the site -- will be resolved.

"Scientific assessments and site characterization support it," Sununu said.

Should the site open the Department of Energy plans to begin accepting high-level nuclear by 2010.

Containers of spent nuclear fuel will be transported -- possibly through Las Vegas -- from sites across the nation to eventually be stored at Yucca Mountain.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who held a press conference soon after Abraham recommended the site to Bush, called Sununu a "prostitute" for the nuclear industry.

"Sununu doesn't want nuclear waste in his state," Goodman said. "I think he's a fraud and a sham, and I don't want him in my state."

The DOE has studied the mountain for 15 years, and has spent about $8 billion.