Yucca supporters push for speedy approval

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2002 | 10:44 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project is vital to the nation's future, representatives from an eclectic group of organizations said Tuesday. The organizations included seniors, electrical workers and African American environmentalists.

"The nation has reached the point in time where difficult and important decisions are now imperative with respect to our energy future and economic security," said James Dushaw, director of the utility department for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. "The lawful obligation of the federal government regarding the disposition of (waste at Yucca) is one which cannot be unduly delayed."

Congress later this year is expected to vote on the federal plan to bury the nation's most radioactive waste at the Yucca site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

President Bush approved the plan last week. Nevada officials slammed Bush's decision; nuclear industry representatives hailed it.

Nuclear industry officials are cobbling together assorted groups that support the project as part of a larger pro-Yucca lobbying effort. Officials hope the coalition will help them convince Congress to support Yucca.

"This is a defining moment in our nation's energy history and for our nation's energy future," said Angelina Howard, a vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top lobby group.

NEI brought officials from six organizations together for a press conference at the National Press Club Tuesday: the African American Environmentalist Association; United Seniors Association, Inc.; Citizens Against Government Waste; a town leader from Waterford, Conn.; the National Association of Manufacturers; and Dushaw.

Dushaw said the electrical workers union had 780,000 members nationwide, including 15,000 who depend on the nuclear industry for jobs. Dushaw told reporters that even the union's Nevada workers support Yucca.

The African American Environmentalist Association is the only environmental group that vocally supports the Yucca Mountain plan, group president Norris McDonald acknowledged.

The 7-year-old group that urges more African American participation in green causes has about 5,000 members nationwide, he said. Yucca Mountain is "clearly the best site" to bury the nation's waste, McDonald said, adding that the nation should also recycle nuclear waste.

Citizens Against Government Waste, a taxpayer watchdog group, has supported the Yucca plan for about five years, president Tom Schatz said. Keeping waste stored at nuclear plants nationwide is "costly and dangerous," Schatz said. Taxpayer money has been allotted for the project and it should proceed, he argued.

Schatz later said the unfinished project represents a liability to taxpayers because the government promised nuclear utilities that it would haul waste away to a waste dump by 1998. That date passed and now utilities are suing the government. Taxpayers ultimately could be responsible for billions of dollars in compensation to the utilities.

One anti-Yucca activist showed up at the press conference uninvited offering a different viewpoint. Public Citizen's Lisa Gue said the assembled groups had argued that Yucca Mountain seems like the safest site to bury waste in the nation, even though many scientific studies at the site are not complete.

"Simply saying that 'Yucca Mountain is the best we can do, let's proceed with it' is not responsible public policy," Gue said.