Editorial: No surrender on Yucca

Monday, Nov. 8, 2004 | 8:59 a.m.

It would be wrong to assume that because President Bush carried Nevada by more than 21,000 votes that Yucca Mountain is no longer a central issue here. For more than 20 years, Nevadans have fought against the federal government's unsafe proposal to turn Yucca Mountain in Southern Nevada into the nation's repository for high-level nuclear waste.

And the fight continues. In a state-funded survey of Nevadans conducted last month, nearly 73 percent of the respondents said the state should continue its legal battle.

This may at first sound paradoxical. President Bush strongly supports Yucca Mountain. And Sen. John Kerry strongly opposed it. So why did a majority of Nevadans support Bush?

The answer is that, for a majority Nevadans, Yucca Mountain wasn't the priority in the national election. A poll partially funded by this newspaper before the election showed that while most Nevadans oppose Yucca Mountain, just 5 percent thought it was the most important issue in electing a president. As subsequent polls have found, terrorism and moral values were uppermost in the minds of voters in deciding whether to vote for Bush or Kerry.

We agree with the 73 percent in the state's survey who felt that Nevada should continue its fight against Yucca Mountain. A federal court decision earlier this year gave us a winning shot. It ruled that the Energy Department had deviated from a National Academy of Sciences recommendation about the length of time the mountain should protect against radiation. It's not likely the mountain could be built to the recommended standard, meaning Nevada has a strong argument that should not be abandoned -- no matter how some people might try to interpret the vote on Election Day.