Democrats rip Bush stance on Yucca

Jace Radke

Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2003 | 10:51 a.m.

Yucca Mountain isn't likely to be a big part of President Bush's agenda during his 3 1/2-hour fund-raising stop in Las Vegas, but Democratic leaders are making the president's strong support for storing nuclear waste in Nevada an issue.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, former Gov. Bob Miller, state Sen. Dina Titus and other Democratic leaders say that while campaigning in 2000 Bush said he would rely on "sound science" in deciding whether to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. He has since signed legislation to clear the way for the project, they said.

"I hope while they're having lunch with the president, (Secretary of State) Dean Heller and (Attorney General) Brian Sandoval ask him why he broke his promise," Titus said Monday. Both are Republicans, and Sandoval is the state chairman of Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

"I hope they ask the president why he ignored science and went with politics and money," Titus said. "I hope voters remember this and send him packing in the next election. I'd like to send him to his own repository."

Titus and others railed against the Bush administration and the storage of nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas during a news conference at the top of a downtown parking garage overlooking the Spaghetti Bowl.

"We're talking about 110,000 shipments of nuclear waste passing through 43 states over the next 38 years," Berkley said. "It will be traveling within one mile of 50 million Americans."

Bush arrived in Las Vegas about 9:30 a.m. and was expected to be back on Air Force One headed for Phoenix by 1 p.m. Bush was scheduled to give a speech focusing on Medicare to a group of seniors at Spring Valley Hospital and attend a fund-raising lunch for his re-election campaign at The Venetian.

The visit will be Bush's first to Nevada as president, although he visited Lake Tahoe in June 2000 as a presidential candidate. Today's lunch is expected to cost between $1,000 and $2,000 a plate and be attended by as many as 500 people, while protests regarding Yucca Mountain take place outside the resort.

In July Vice President Dick Cheney's Las Vegas visit was met with Yucca protests as he raised $300,000 in campaign funds at the Spanish Trail Country Club.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, said he doesn't believe the argument that transporting all of the nation's nuclear waste to one repository would be safer than storing it in place at the 131 nuclear reactors around the country.

"All he has to do is ask his own Secret Service contingent if he is easier to guard in place or while he is moving around," Perkins said.

Miller said Democratic presidential candidates have been honest on the issue.

"They have not lied to Nevadans, and many voted against Yucca Mountain," Miller said. "There is no way on God's green earth that they can be worse than what we have now."