Sandoval says feds aren’t offering money for Yucca

Friday, April 11, 2003 | 9:49 a.m.

At a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, forum Thursday night, Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said people ask him all of the time if it wouldn't be wiser for the state to get paid for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository instead of spending millions to try to keep it from opening.

"First and foremost, I would not be willing to negotiate away the health, safety and welfare of the people of Nevada," Sandoval said. "The state cannot abandon its duty to protect public health and safety."

And even if that wasn't the case, no one has offered Nevada any money to take the waste, Sandoval said. The Energy Department is withholding millions in funds granted by Congress to the state and counties.

"There is no money available in the federal budget," the attorney general said. "It's not like the phone is ringing off the hook (with offers)."

Meanwhile, the state is struggling with a $710 million shortfall, and it is expected to cost Nevada $5 million to $10 million to wage a legal battle based on five lawsuits filed against the nuclear repository in the U.S. Court of Appeals, Sandoval said.

Last year President Bush approved the site and Congress overrode Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the nuclear repository.

But the state's legal cases are based on 300 scientific and technical flaws in the more than 20 years of Department of Energy studies at Yucca Mountain, he said.

A constitutional case based on the state's right to defend itself against harm from burying 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain may go to the U.S. Supreme Court by 2005 and could set a precedent for state's rights, he said.

"The burden is on the DOE to prove it's safe and I don't think they've done that and I am going to continue to defend the state," Sandoval said.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has said that Yucca Mountain is needed for national security reasons to protect nuclear materials from terrorist attacks after the Sept. 11, 2002 terrorist attacks.

"We believe the secretary's argument is baseless," Sandoval said. "It does nothing except create a big target in Nevada."

The Energy Department also is considering constructing an above-ground storage area near Yucca Mountain to stack waste containers and cool them off before putting them inside the mountain.

"It will create the world's largest above-ground storage facility and the world's largest underground nuclear dump," Sandoval said. "Above-ground storage could continue for at least 100 years, creating the largest nuclear target in the world."

The state also offered a solution to the nuclear industry: keep the wastes in protected dry casks at the reactors under DOE ownership.