Columnist Jeff German: Reid, Ensign turn tables on Yucca Mountain

Friday, Dec. 16, 2005 | 7:56 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

After taking a beating from the federal government for nearly a quarter-century, Nevada is on the offensive for the first time in its epic battle against Yucca Mountain.

The bill Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign introduced to provide an alternative to Yucca Mountain has energized the Nevada forces.

"They've beaten us down all these years, but they didn't knock us out," says former Gov. Bob Miller, who has been at the forefront of much of the fight. "And now we're bouncing back."

The bill would allow the government to take ownership of high-level waste at nuclear plants across the country and pay the utilities to store it above ground in dry casks at those sites.

That would ease the nuclear power industry's concerns about being held liable for the deadly waste currently being kept at its reactors.

But more importantly it would eliminate the need to transport the waste across the nation's highways to the flawed burial grounds at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

And since the dry casks already have been tested to be safe for 100 years, the bill would buy time to find another long-term solution.

"I think it's a brilliant move," says longtime Yucca Mountain critic, former Sen. Richard Bryan. "In effect it puts the nuclear ball back in the utilities' court."

Bob Loux, the state's top Yucca Mountain watchdog, says the Reid-Ensign bill reflects "reality" in the ongoing nuclear waste storage debate.

"This is what's going to be done in the end, anyway," he says. "This stuff is not going to be moved from any of these reactor sites."

Still, Reid and Ensign face an uphill battle on Capitol Hill to get this legislation passed. The majority of the Republican-controlled Congress still backs Yucca Mountain.

But the good news is that the Nevada senators out of the box have won the support of two key Republicans, Sens. Robert Bennett and Orrin Hatch of Utah, who are co-sponsors of the bill.

And you can never underestimate Reid's growing abilities as the Democratic minority leader.

Reid already has a grass-roots organization in place to rally support for the measure among elected officials in states along the Yucca Mountain transportation routes. The waste is slated to pass through some pretty big metropolitan areas.

Recently, the environmental group Citizen Alert formed a committee, Nevadans United to Finish the Job, to spread the anti-Yucca Mountain word across the country.

Peggy Maze-Johnson, Citizen Alert's executive director in Las Vegas, says the committee hopes to raise $500,000 for its campaign. It took in $75,000 at a Las Vegas benefit earlier this month.

"We're going to be making people understand that this isn't just a Nevada problem" Maze-Johnson says. "We've known for a long time that putting this stuff on the road is a dangerous, dangerous proposition."

What has fired up Nevada forces is the great timing of the Reid-Ensign bill.

It comes while Yucca Mountain appears most vulnerable. Even those within the nuclear power industry are starting to question whether storing radioactive waste in Nevada is the right approach.

"This has been a very good year for us," Bryan says. "There's just been a steady stream of negative publicity over the Yucca Mountain program.

"All of a sudden the aura of inevitability has been shredded."