Editorial: A telling moment for dump

Friday, March 1, 2002 | 4:31 a.m.

One of the most revealing episodes about Yucca Mountain's fate came during the 2000 election season. It didn't occur out on the presidential campaign trail, and it didn't take place in Nevada, which had been targeted for nuclear waste. No, the telling moment happened far away in Washington, D.C. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said on the Senate floor in July 2000 that a nuclear waste dump would be built within six to eight months if George W. Bush was elected president. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., pounced on Domenici's statement and warned Nevadans about the prospect. But Nevada's Republican leaders assured the state's residents that Bush would base any Yucca Mountain decision on "sound science." It turns out Reid was much closer to the truth: Just a year after being sworn into office, Bush has signed off on a permanent nuclear waste dump in Nevada despite an array of scientific evidence that has questioned Yucca Mountain's suitability.

The Yucca Mountain battle now shifts to Congress. The GOP-led House is expected to approve the president's recommendation, but the vote is anticipated to be closer in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats. Reid, now that he is assistant majority leader of the Senate, is under pressure to repeat a similar performance from 2000, when he and then-Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., were able to get 34 senators -- 32 Democrats and two Republicans -- to sustain President Clinton's veto of legislation that would have begun sending nuclear waste to Nevada by 2007. The task is much tougher this time because the Nuclear Waste Policy Act would require a majority in both house of Congress --- 51 votes in the Senate -- to block Yucca Mountain's selection by the president.

Reid has received much of the attention in the fight in Congress, but we shouldn't overlook the role played by the state's other senator. When John Ensign ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2000, he suggested that his election would improve Nevada's chances of derailing a nuclear waste dump. Ensign noted that for 12 years the state's two senators had been Democrats. With his election, Ensign said, a Republican voice from Nevada finally would be added to the debate in the Senate. "Now we'll have a Nevadan in the same room with the Republicans when these discussions are held," Ensign said shortly after his election. Well, that day of reckoning is here, and it's time for Ensign to make good on his campaign promise.

If Reid this time can hold on to the 34 senators who sustained the veto of the nuclear waste legislation in 2000 -- no small feat since a popular wartime president favors the dump -- then all Ensign has to do is get 17 additional Republicans to go along with him. But the reality is this will be an uphill battle for Ensign because the Republican leadership in Congress has made getting a nuclear waste dump built in Nevada one of its top priorities. If only enough Nevadans had listened to Domenici's prediction and ignored Bush's false assurances that he would treat us fairly on Yucca Mountain, the presidential election's outcome might have been different and we wouldn't have to pin so much of our hopes on the persuasion skills of a freshman senator.