Editorial: Hypocrisy not getting in their way

Monday, July 1, 2002 | 9 a.m.

The year was 1998. The U.S. senator was worried about the Energy Department's plan to truck plutonium through his state. So he wrote a letter to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, demanding a public hearing in his home state because his constituents weren't familiar with the transportation plan. "To not do so would be irresponsible and offensive to Michigan residents," he wrote. The senator's name: Spencer Abraham. That's right, he's the same man who now, as the Energy Secretary, says it's perfectly safe to ship 77,000 tons of nuclear waste cross-country to Nevada. My, how times change when you switch jobs.

Abraham shouldn't feel too lonely in his hypocrisy, though. The nuclear power industry's point man on Yucca Mountain, John Sununu, could teach Richardson a thing or two. In 1986, when Sununu was governor of New Hampshire, he waged a campaign against a plan to bury high-level nuclear waste in his state. But now Sununu, a highly paid pitchman for the nuclear power industry, has the gall to accuse Nevadans of being unpatriotic if we don't roll over and accept nuclear waste. Sununu proves that anyone can be bought -- if the price is right.

The Yucca Mountain project's fate rests in the hands of 100 U.S. senators. Many of these senators have been the beneficiaries of handsome contributions from the nuclear power industry. But even for senators whose states have nuclear power reactors, it's much more dangerous to put that nuclear waste out on the road or on rails where it can be the target of a terrorist attack or where an accident could threaten the lives of their states' residents. Shipping and burying radioactive garbage is dangerous, as both Abraham and Sununu once acknowledged in more candid times. The Achilles' heel of the Yucca Mountain project always has been the inherent dangers associated with shipping nuclear waste hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles cross-country to Nevada. We can only hope that the senators vote their conscience and do what's right to protect their residents f rom needless transportation accidents involving man's deadliest waste.