Yucca Johnny targets youngsters’ hearts, minds

Friday, March 24, 2006 | 7:15 a.m.

The Energy Department has worked for years to educate adults on the value of a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Now it is also targeting children.

A federal government Web site hosted by an animated "Yucca Johnny" suggests that the waste must be stored somewhere. And for Yucca Johnny's druthers, that "somewhere" is about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the federal government wants to store 80,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste deep inside Yucca Mountain.

"What if we took out the garbage, but let it pile up in our yards?" Yucca Johnny asks on the Web site, www.ocrwm.doe.gov/youth/index.htm. "Over time, our neighborhoods would become very unhealthy places to live. So we have sanitary workers pick up our garbage and properly dispose of it in landfills.

"Right now, nuclear waste is piling up in a lot of places around the country ... We must be responsible for our nuclear waste and put in a place where it can never harm people or the environment."

Yucca Johnny speaks in a drawl lifted from the comic sidekicks in old horse operas, certainly not like the native accents found in Nevada - where elected state and federal officials and conservation groups, among others, want no part of the nuclear waste. They say the proposed $60 billion repository would allow the waste to seep into the environment.

So now, they've got Yucca Johnny in the cross hairs. Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, an environmental advocacy group, compared the Web site to techniques used by child molesters.

"They're grooming," she said. "Child molesters start out by grooming their targets, their intended victims. This is outrageous. It's disgusting, is what it is."

Allen Benson, director of external affairs for Energy's Yucca Mountain Project, said the goal of such "youth zone" Web sites is to educate and inform. In the case of Yucca Johnny, the purpose is not to push the project, he said.

"You'll find youth zones on all government Web sites," Benson said. "It's not unusual. Our job in the Youth Zone is to present factual information on the project at a level the kids can understand.

Johnson said her group is drafting a curriculum to balance the department's message. A Citizen Alert program in the schools would focus on recycling and environmental stewardship, she said.

"We want young people to understand that we're here to protect this land for future generations," she said. "We're not going to talk Yucca Johnny in the early grades."