Editorial: There’s a sucker born every minute

Friday, July 19, 2002 | 9:09 a.m.

Utah's two senators thought they had scored a coup for their state on the eve of last week's Yucca Mountain vote in the Senate. In return for voting to send 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to a permanent dump in Nevada, Republicans Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett secured a statement from Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham pledging that no federal funds would be used to build a temporary nuclear waste dump proposed for Utah. Hatch crowed that this was a "victory" in his state's bid to stop nuclear waste from being stored there. But the reality is that the Utahns were snookered by the Bush administration because they were handed an empty pledge. The utilities that want to store nuclear waste in Utah said late last week that they will go forward anyway with their plans in Utah since they will use private funds, not federal money, for the project.

Hatch and Bennett should have been more circumspect about the White House's word on nuclear waste storage. After all, it was during the 2000 campaign that Bush issued a statement in Nevada that he would base his Yucca Mountain decision on science, not politics. But that lie was exposed earlier this year when he approved Yucca Mountain even though unanswered questions remained about the site's suitability. If Bush was willing to dupe Nevada's voters, Hatch and Bennett should have realized that the administration would try to hoodwink them, too.