Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Musicians sound off on Yucca Mountain perils

WASHINGTON -- Veteran musician David Crosby has been an anti-nuclear activist dating to the nuclear energy industry's early days in the 1960s. So he has watched with interest as the government developed its proposal to bury waste from nuclear plants in the Nevada desert.

Now Crosby is one of a number of rock 'n' roll artists throwing their star power behind an effort to block the Yucca Mountain project.

Crosby has joined a handful of musicians such as Bonnie Raitt and Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, plus younger performers such as Ani DiFranco, who are making last-minute efforts to help derail the plan to haul nuclear waste to the Yucca site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas for permanent disposal.

"I don't want to say I told you so, but all the activists at the time said, 'Don't build these plants -- you don't have any place to put the waste,' " Crosby said in a recent telephone interview from his California home, where he had just pulled fresh accident statistics off his fax machine, sent from the National Transportation Safety Board.

"Now they want to move it. Statistically, there isn't a chance in hell they can move this stuff without having a wreck."

Crosby is battling Yucca on the front where Nevada officials need the most urgent help: in Congress, where lawmakers are poised to give the project its final seal of approval.

The House has approved Yucca overwhelmingly; the Senate is likely to vote in July.

Crosby said he had spoken to a number of senators already, some he called friends, urging them to oppose Yucca. The 60-year-old singer-songwriter, who has been a member of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash, has several more calls to make, he said. Crosby said he has spoken to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., but wouldn't name others or recount conversations.

Crosby said he was arguing a simple point to lawmakers: that the Yucca plan is dangerous because so much waste -- 77,000 tons -- would have to be shipped cross-country to Nevada from 131 temporary nuclear waste sites, many of them nuclear power plants. That invites the risk of accidents and terrorist attacks, he said.

"This is a suicidal move," the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer said, adding, "Our rail lines are in terrible shape, man."

Nuclear industry experts, plus government officials from a number of agencies including the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation, say waste transportation is safe. And officials at the Energy Department, which manages the project, say the Yucca site is scientifically suitable for isolating waste for thousands of years.

Nuclear power officials agree and have prodded Congress to give the project a green light. They argue that the Yucca plan is key to the industry's future.

A lobbying war on both sides of the Yucca issue has developed as pro- and anti-Yucca forces muster in an effort to influence the Senate vote. Nevada officials and environmentalists say they have been outnumbered -- and outspent -- by the nuclear industry.

But a few musicians can help a little in their bid to even the score, activists say.

"This is artists who believe that our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children, deserve a nuclear-free future," said Tom Campbell of the California-based Guacamole Fund, a nonprofit that organizes benefits for environmental causes. Campbell has worked with artists like Crosby, Raitt and Jackson Browne in recent years on anti-nuclear benefits.

"A lot of us are worn out having to constantly struggle with this thing," Campbell said of the 20-year-old Yucca plan.

Among the most vocal anti-Yucca rockers now on tour is Peter Garrett, frontman for the Australian band Midnight Oil, who has urged fans to call their senators and wants to meet personally with several senators, activists said. The band is hanging a banner at shows that reads, "Atomic trains and trucks through your state? Stop the Yucca Mountain dump. Urgent: calls needed to your U.S. senator."

Garrett, the 7-foot, shaven-headed leader of the group, is also a lawyer and an outspoken critic of a proposed national nuclear waste dump in Australia. He spoke to reporters before a recent show in Portland, Ore., calling the Yucca plan a "harebrained recipe for hell."

Raitt, another longtime environmental activist, said Yucca was "a disaster waiting to happen" during an Earth Day rally in Washington last month aimed at lawmakers. She urged people to call their senators.

"Yucca is in a very active earthquake zone that leaks water like a sieve," Raitt said. "It sits atop a drinking water supply that would become contaminated with radioactivity if waste is buried there."

Raitt, Crosby, Browne and the Indigo Girls were among the headliners on the Honor the Earth tour in 2000, designed to raise awareness of Native American issues, including the Western Shoshone's opposition to Yucca Mountain. The tour played 14 dates, including a few on proposed nuclear waste transportation routes.

"Bush and his energy buddies in the industry and Congress have Yucca on the fast track," the Indigo Girls tell fans on their website. The veteran duo, Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, implore fans to contact their senators, and include a sample letter. "Tell your friends, tell everyone you know, write a letter or call your Senator and tell them to stop this dump."

Rocker Ani DiFranco has also taken an interest in Yucca, allowing environmental activists to work anti-Yucca information tables at her shows. Activist Susan Alzner of the Citizens Awareness Network, an environmental group in the Northeast, passed out anti-Yucca postcards for fans to sign and send to their senators during DiFranco shows in April in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and Providence, R.I.

"Ani feels that people in general have become disconnected from the governmental process and she was excited that people have been engaged on this issue with their local governments and members of Congress," Alzner said.

Even Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson, who runs an environmental group called Just Within Reach, is reportedly opposed to Yucca. When the topic came up during an episode of ABC's "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher" last month, Richardson argued that waste should be left for now in temporary storage at nuclear power plants.

"You don't think there's any risk transporting nuclear waste on the road?" Richardson asked Maher, according to a show transcript.

Host Maher, who said he supports Yucca, replied, "I do think there's a risk. I think there's a risk to living, but we're talking about the best solution. Do you think there's less of a risk keeping it in 131 sites around the country above ground?"

Richardson: "It's above ground where they can keep an eye on it. If they put it below ground, it's out of sight, out of mind. What if we have an earthquake?"

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