RFK Jr. says nuke waste should stay at power plants

Friday, Oct. 8, 2004 | 9:48 a.m.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his six children live in New York, 10 miles downwind from Indian Point, the oldest nuclear power plant in the United States, but he said Thursday its nuclear wastes should not be shipped across country to Nevada for burial.

While the nuclear industry is eager to open Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the nation's high-level nuclear waste repository, New Yorkers are uneasy about shipments of the nuclear waste passing by their homes, schools and hospitals, Kennedy said to more than 100 people at UNLV Thursday night.

"They (nuclear industry) are desperate to open Yucca Mountain," Kennedy said.

Kennedy, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of Waterkeeper Alliance, said that a Yucca Mountain repository would allow nuclear power plants to continue operating.

"We don't want them to transport those fuel rods out of New York," Kennedy said.

Instead, the nuclear wastes that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years could be stored in dry casks at the reactor sites.

"The problem is, the industry has to pay for it if stored on site, but if they ship it out here, the public has to pay for it."

President Bush made a promise to Nevada that he would stick to sound science, Kennedy said.

Scientists have said that more than 100 unanswered questions remain about the mountain's ability to contain radioactive wastes for thousands of years. A federal judge ordered the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to protect future generations from radiation exposure.

"They were all wrong on the geology in the first place."

In his book, "Crimes Against Nature," Kennedy charges that Bush's administration deliberately set out to distort science. Nobel Prize winners and distinguished scientists from the National Academy of Sciences to universities have signed letters protesting Bush policies on global warming, genetic studies and environmental research.

"I want to be very clear here: This book is not about a Democrat attacking a Republican administration," he said.

The book reveals Bush appointees, most of them unfamiliar to the public, who bring corporate influence into the Oval Office and contributions to GOP coffers.

Kennedy said he believes in America's free market system because capitalism promotes efficiency and discipline. However, the public shares in common resources such as clean air, clean water, forests and wildlands.

"I don't think it is radical to protect the air and the water," Kennedy said. "I don't believe there is such a thing as Democratic children or Republican children."

Asked if he planned to run for office like his father, Kennedy Jr. replied:

"If I can escape that fate, I will."

Kennedy said he felt that he was effective in his roles as attorney, activist, professor and fisherman. His childhood fishing trips on the Hudson River led him into environmental activism.

Throughout his 45-minute speech that drew a standing ovation, Kennedy never mentioned Democratic presidential challenger Sen. John Kerry.

Kennedy's visit to UNLV was part of a 10-college campus tour after his book, subtitled, "How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy."