Editorial: Blame for dump easy to place

Friday, July 12, 2002 | 4:43 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: July 14, 2002

Now that the Congress has voted in favor of sending nuclear waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain, our state's elected leaders already are looking ahead to the regulatory battles and lawsuits they hope can block the dump from becoming a reality. Still, we should take a moment to step back and remind ourselves how we got here. If not for a Republican-led drive to send nuclear waste to Nevada, last week's pivotal vote in the Senate may never have happened.

Sure, it was a Democratic-controlled Congress and Republican President Ronald Reagan that in 1987 dropped two other potential nuclear waste dumpsites from consideration and settled on just one to be studied for suitability: Yucca Mountain. But since that time it has been Republicans who have made Yucca Mountain a litmus test in their energy policy. The nuclear power industry, which pushed hard for Yucca Mountain's approval, rewarded the GOP with huge campaign contributions because of the Republican congressional leadership's support for the dump. The current Republican president, George Bush, also was loaded with nuclear power industry donations in his 2000 campaign.

The numbers speak for themselves. In the House vote in May, just 13 Republicans voted against Yucca Mountain while 203 Republicans voted for the dump. Among Democrats, a majority voted against Yucca Mountain -- 114 -- while 103 voted for the dump. In the Senate last week, of the 50 Democrats and one independent, 36 voted against Yucca Mountain, a 72 percent disapproval rate. Among Republicans, just three of their 48 voted against Yucca Mountain. And for a party that champions states' rights, the Republicans' hypocrisy was evident on this issue since Nevadans overwhelmingly opposed the federal government's imposition of a dump, which one day could hold 77,000 tons of man's deadliest waste.

It also is clear that George Bush lied to Nevadans when he pledged in 2000 to use science to base his decision on Yucca Mountain. It was Bush who accelerated the drive to send nuclear waste to Nevada even though hundreds of unanswered questions remain about the dangers associated with burying the waste and transporting it cross-country. If Yucca Mountain ever opens, we'll have George Bush and the current crop of GOP congressional leaders to thank.