Columnist Susan Snyder: Fight isn’t a waste of time

Friday, March 5, 2004 | 8:23 a.m.

Nationally acclaimed anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman painted a different, more scary picture of the 9-11 attacks when he was in Las Vegas earlier this week.

"One minute before they flew into the World Trade Center, they flew over the Indian River nuclear power plant 40 miles north of Manhattan," Wasserman said. "If they'd decided to drop one minute earlier, we wouldn't have been talking about 2,700 people dead. We'd have been talking about hundreds of thousands dead."

And the East Coast of the United States would still be a radioactive wasteland, he said to about 60 people who gathered to hear him speak at UNLV on Tuesday night. Wasserman, in town for a renewable energy convention, made the speech at the invitation of the local Sierra Club chapter.

He urged those who don't want the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository to keep fighting.

"There is no suitable site for nuclear waste storage on the face of the earth," Wasserman said. "You put it on the highways. You put it on the railroads. You run it up and down the waterways. It's absolutely insane.

"This stuff has to stay where it is," he said. "We need to stop producing it and leave it where it is."

Wasserman didn't really say anything about nuclear waste that most people don't already know or should know. Generating power with wind or the sun is always safer and sometimes cheaper. The concept of toting deadly radioactive cargo around the country without ever having an accident is unrealistic.

But Wasserman did offer those in attendance Tuesday night something many may have thought was lost.

Hope.

"How can we stop this thing?" a member of the audience asked.

"Democracy," Wasserman replied. "It's never over. You just have to keep banging away. You keep writing letters. You keep electing. Get those casino owners off their butts."

On the surface, the message delivered Tuesday was about generating power -- the kind that fuels our lights. But the local Sierra Club members also are trying to generate the kind of power that fuels people.

On Saturday they are staging a community walk for volunteers who are willing to go door-to-door and talk with people about environmental issues.

They've been at it since January, hitting a different neighborhood every two weeks. But every walk hits close to home, Meghan Shaw, the club's field operations director, said.

"Your neighborhood is anywhere in Las Vegas when it comes to what kind of water you're drinking, what kind of air you're breathing and whether you're dealing with high-level nuclear waste in your back yard," she said.

Volunteers will stroll the areas off Maryland Parkway between Charleston Boulevard and Oakey Avenue. Participants are convening at 10 a.m. in Huntridge Circle Park, which sits in the middle of Maryland Parkway just south of Charleston. Call 732-7750 for information.

Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force that opposes the Yucca Mountain storage facility, remains optimistic that the people can prevail.

"The first people who tried to get this in thought it would happen by 1985," she said. "It didn't happen then, and it's not going to happen this time."