Friday, Nov. 5, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Nearly 73 percent of Nevadans believe the state should continue fighting Yucca Mountain, according to a new state-sponsored survey.
Almost three-quarters of those surveyed said the state should continue its long battle against Yucca rather than negotiate for benefits. In the latest phase of the fight, a federal court dealt the Energy Department project a setback when it ruled that a radiation protection standard did not match a National Academy of Sciences recommendation.
"With a federal court decision that can kill the project, Nevadans understand that the dump is far from a done deal," Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said.
The survey also asked respondents if the Energy Department "can be trusted to live up to any benefits agreement the federal government would make with Nevada." Twenty-seven percent agreed and 69 percent disagreed.
"They are saying, 'We don't want this and we won't be fooled into cutting any deals,' " Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency executive director Bob Loux said.
The survey, conducted by Oregon-based Northwest Survey and Data Services, polled 402 randomly selected state residents between Oct. 7 and 18. The margin of error is 4.8 percent.
The same survey was conducted last year and this year's results show a slight increase in opposition to Yucca. This year nearly 77 percent of respondents said they would vote against Yucca Mountain if given a chance to vote, with 19 percent responding that they would vote for it.
In 2003, 76 percent said they would vote for it, 22 percent against.
The annual survey is more credible and consistent than others because the same core questions and sample size have been used for 15 years, Sandoval said.
A September Las Vegas Sun/Channel 8 Eyewitness News/KNPR Nevada Public Radio poll of 600 likely voters done by Belden Russonello & Stewart of Washington, D.C. showed 66 percent of Nevadans opposed to Yucca Mountain. But 57 percent of those polled said the candidates' positions on Yucca Mountain were not important to the way they would vote.
A September poll of 625 people, conducted by Washington-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., for the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that 50 percent of Nevadans said the state should fight Yucca, and 46 percent said Nevada officials should negotiate for benefits.
In a poll conducted in May by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the leading pro-Yucca lobby group, 47 percent of 1,000 Nevada voters said they "strongly disapprove" of Yucca, down from 59 percent in 2002 and 54 percent in 2003 who strongly disapproved.
Former Gov. Bob List, now a paid consultant for NEI who has argued that the state should negotiate for benefits, questioned the scientific sample and the questions on the latest survey.
"The questions are a little bit cooked to get the results they want to see," List said.
Most Nevadans don't want Yucca if given a choice, but they are also increasingly coming to want to negotiate for benefits, List said. List pointed to surveys that indicate voters do not rank Yucca Mountain among the most important election issues.
"It has fallen down to the level of, 'By the way, I really don't want it here, but I think it's coming and it's time to negotiate for the upside,' " List said. "There is a sense of inevitability."
Election Day reflected that, List said. Yucca Mountain was an issue in the presidential election as the campaigns sparred over the issue in Nevada. President Bush approved Yucca Mountain. Sen. John Kerry said he would kill the project. Nevada voters gave Bush a 50-48 percent win in the state.
So the latest poll also doesn't appear to mesh with Election Day results. By a margin of 22,000 votes, Nevadans voted to return Bush to the White House just two years after he approved the project.
Several Nevada Democrats said this week that Nevada's vote for Bush makes it harder to argue on a national stage that the state opposes Yucca.
Observers said Nevadans don't base their votes solely on Yucca -- even though they don't want the nation's first underground repository for highly radioactive waste constructed 90 miles from Las Vegas. Nevadans voted more based on economic and security issues than on Yucca, Gov. Kenny Guinn, co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Nevada, said this week.
"We went the entire election without a terrorist attack," Guinn said. "People want security No. 1."
The Yucca issue has little to do with who is president, Sandoval spokesman Tom Sargent said, although Kerry had outlined several steps he would have taken to effectively kill the project. The matter will be settled by the courts, Sargent said.
"We feel very confident we will prevail in the courts," he said.
The survey results were compiled before the election, but Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency officials did not want the results lost in the din of the pre-election media frenzy, Loux said. The timing of the report's release was not politically motivated, said Loux, whose office answers to Guinn. The survey is typically released around the first of November, he said, although last year it was released Oct. 30.
"The election didn't have anything to do with it, per se," Loux said. "We wanted it to have some visibility."
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