Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Website exposes facts

Thursday, June 13, 2002 | 9:12 a.m.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the desire of the American people to know in advance what is bad for them.

So far, the United States government, through the Congress and the Department of Energy, has done just that as it relates to the transportation of 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to our Yucca Mountain. Our government has tried to keep U.S. citizens in the dark, preferring to give them the old "trust us" line in the hopes that before we know what is bad for us it has already happened.

That has been the decades-long conduct of those in the DOE, their puppetmasters in the nuclear power industry and the congressmen hellbent on shoving the radioactive waste down our throats. Those who want Yucca Mountain understand the drill: "Tell the people it is safe, don't give them the facts and bluff our way past sound science and common sense."

So far, those tactics have worked well for the people who want nothing more than to build more nuclear power plants around the country and who know that an answer to the nuclear waste problem is essential before their profits can start rolling in.

They have convinced President George W. Bush to abandon a promise he made to Nevadans to decide, based on science, whether to approve Yucca Mountain as the dump of choice until the end of time.

They have convinced, through the persuasiveness of their $30 million in campaign contributions, the House of Representatives to vote overwhelmingly against Nevada's rights as a state to say "no," and they think they are poised to win a vote in the Senate sometime in the next few weeks.

And they may win that vote. But, and here may be the fatal flaw in their heavy-handed plan to railroad an entire country toward their bottom lines, they didn't count on the power of the facts.

I don't know if it is too late or not, but I do know that every hour hundreds and thousands of Americans are logging on the Internet to mapscience.org to see if their homes, their children's schools and their hospitals, parks and businesses are within the geographical harm's way of the thousands of trucks and trains that will roll across America for decades should the Senate do the wrong thing.

What the Environmental Working Group has done - with the help of Sen. Harry Reid - has put information vital to America in the living rooms of every citizen interested enough to find out the truth about this debacle waiting to happen.

And given the land-speed record which the President set in making this all-too-hasty decision to dump the nation's garbage on Nevadans, I wouldn't doubt the benefit that would accrue to the White House if the folks within it looked at the website, too.

All President Bush has to do is punch in the addresses of his friends and supporters and he will learn that many of them live in the kill zones and the just "get real sick" zones along the myriad routes that this radioactive garbage will travel on its way to Nevada. He will learn that his friends in the nuclear power industry included him in on the hoodwinking they gave to most of the elected leadership in this country.

And that, by itself, should make him mad. Mad enough to change his mind and do what responsible leadership would do under these circumstances. Step back from the brink of a very bad and disastrous decision and find out the facts before committing the country on a course from which it cannot turn back.

In the meantime, mothers and fathers in every state of the union are now able to see just how much they have not been told by their government about the adverse effects of shipping radioactive waste across this country. They can learn the hollowness of the industry claim that Yucca will get the waste "out of their back yards" because they will see in black and white and living color that when Yucca is full of waste so, too, will be their power plants that will keep on churning for the next 40 years.

And they will learn how any terrorist looking for the makings of a "dirty" atom bomb will no longer have to look far and deep. He need only look to our highways and railways for his prize - courtesy of the United States government.

Over the next few days and weeks the American people will learn how bad life can get for them if the Senate votes to approve Yucca Mountain. They will learn this, not from the government, which has the obligation to tell them these things, but from a website cobbled together by citizens who know what the government wants to hide.

And, as they learn the facts, the people will get mad. Mad enough to do something about it?

We will know the answer soon enough.