Letter: Kerry is Nevada’s friend on dump

Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004 | 8:54 a.m.

Nevada is truly a "battleground" state in this year's presidential election. The most decisive issue is Yucca Mountain.

The candidates' positions on this radioactive Nevada issue are crystal clear: President Bush supports the Yucca Mountain dump and Sen. Kerry opposes it.

President Bush approved the controversial project two years ago. And it is known that Kerry has consistently opposed Yucca Mountain in recent years and that he voted against the project in 2002.

Nearly 300 scientific questions about the Yucca Mountain dump remain unanswered. Yet President Bush took less than a day to review thousands of pages of scientific studies.

Sen. Kerry has rightly accused the president of breaking his 2000 campaign promise to Nevada. "When John Kerry is president, there will be no nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Period," he promised. Instead, he said he would leave nuclear waste where it is at sites throughout the country (none of them in Nevada) and instruct the National Academy of Science to determine how the nation should deal with nuclear waste storage. Sounds reasonable to me.

JOHN MARCHESE