Letter: Deny feds access to Yucca site

Thursday, Jan. 8, 2004 | 9:10 a.m.

I was amazed at all the concern about nuclear waste in Sunday's paper. Now that the Energy Department has spent $4 billion of our tax money putting that hole in Yucca Mountain, do we really believe that it's not a political "done deal?"

If the storage casks are going to last for l0,000 years, they could just as well sit where they are instead of putting the whole country at risk by shipping them to Nevada. Things have changed at the DOE -- I have noticed that the little store fronts no longer say "Yucca Mountain Science Centers." Rather, they now say "Yucca Mountain Information Centers."

Since the the atomic tests in the 1950s, I have felt that the people of Nevada have been exposed to enough radiation. If the governor had some intestinal fortitude, he could deny the federal government access to Yucca Mountain. It is illegal for the feds to tell us that we must accept the waste from all the other states plus what is going to come back from the foreign countries that we have helped with their nuclear power.

Wake up people, we have been sold out again.

RICHARD A. BROWN

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