Sunday, July 27, 2008 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
There you go again.
President Reagan loved to use that phrase as a put-down of whatever was being said and whoever was saying it. As in, we’ve heard all this before and it still makes no sense so tell us something new or try silence. He was a very effective communicator.
I am reminded of our former president during this election season because, as we all struggle to find reasons — good and bad — to support either Sen. John McCain or Sen. Barack Obama, it seems as if we are hearing the same old thing from the politicians.
I refer specifically to the candidates’ positions on the federal government’s long-held desire to shove 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste down Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. This has been a decades-long process that had its beginnings in the minds of the political delegations from Texas and Louisiana, with an assist from the nuclear power industry.
When there was a semblance of scientific and political fairness, the government was studying multiple sites across the country in which to bury radioactive waste that would live hot and dangerous for hundreds of thousands and, perhaps, a million or more, years. When it appeared Texas or Louisiana might win the sweepstakes as the safest place to bury this stuff, politicians jumped into action.
They looked for the one state under consideration that had a weak or virtually nonexistent congressional delegation and a geographic area that posed no threat to an existing population. For one, they couldn’t afford public outcry and, more important, they couldn’t handle a vocal and powerful delegation dead set against putting Nevada in the middle of the radioactive bull’s-eye.
That’s how Nevada’s Yucca Mountain won the lottery. And, if it ever gets built, that’s how Nevada will lose its future.
The question is, will it ever get built? Thanks to Nevada’s senior senator, Harry Reid, the funding for the project keeps getting cut every year, so that what should have been a 2006 opening of the dump site is now closer to 2020 or further away. In fact, had it not been for Reid, we would probably be talking about the effects of Yucca Mountain on our health and welfare because it probably would have been open by now.
But I digress. Back to the future and this year’s candidates and their positions on Yucca Mountain. And make no mistake about it, if there is a high-level accident in or near Las Vegas, what is happening here economically will be child’s play compared with the death of tourism that will result from the first day’s headlines. Not to mention the impact on this community’s short- and long-term health.
A number of issues distinguish Obama and McCain from each other, but one is so clear and so unambiguous that we ignore it at our peril.
McCain believes Yucca Mountain must open. Obama believes it must never open.
In 2000, candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush told Nevadans what they believed and what they would do regarding the dump site. Bush said he would open Yucca only if science supported it. Gore said science didn’t support it so he wouldn’t open it. Nevadans voted for George Bush, in part believing his promise to rely on science and deciding their tax bill was more important than their medical bills.
We all know what happened. President Bush wouldn’t know science if it hit him, so his decision was based on what was best for the power companies. And, Al Gore never got the chance to keep his promise but his subsequent actions regarding the environment give us every reason to believe he would have been good to his word.
McCain, while saying he believes in Yucca Mountain, has said he would prefer to send tens of thousands of tons of the deadliest poison known to man to Siberia, presumably on planes that don’t crash and boats that don’t sink.
Obama is more of a realist, choosing to rely on science to make his decision. In that regard, I am reminded of an article I read almost four years ago in Technology Review, a magazine published by MIT. Under the title “A New Vision for Nuclear Waste,” the article argued that “Storing nuclear waste underground at Yucca Mountain for 100,000 years is a terrible idea. A better approach may be to buy some time — until new containment technologies mature.”
In the article, Matthew Wald wrote that the government must accept that its Yucca plan is a failure.
Based on what science knows today, the waste can be safely stored for 100 years right where it is made. No transportation, no accidents, no burying in someone else’s back yard and no susceptibility to terrorist attacks along the nation’s highways and byways. Just leave it where it is — safe and secure.
Science, he argued, would catch up to the challenge within the next few decades and then there would be an answer that would be not only safe and secure but feasible and affordable.
It is obvious to me that Obama was cognizant of this scientifically supportable position and McCain, if he was cognizant, didn’t let on. The simple result of either man’s position could be the difference between life and death — both economic and human.
There is still plenty of time to decide who is best for our country, our state and ourselves as president of the United States. That is a process most of us will undertake through the summer and fall. For now, though, it would serve each of us well to consider where the candidates are on Yucca Mountain.
It may not mean much to others, but the economic and physical well-being of Nevada should mean a whole lot to us.
Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
