YUCCA MOUNTAIN: PART I OF II:

Two decades later, how we got here

A look back at the nuclear waste plan that unifies Nevada, divides Obama and McCain

BLOOMBERG NEWS FILE

The U.S. Energy Department plans to store spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, an extinct volcano about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

By Phoebe Sweet (contact)

Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008 | 2 a.m.

SUN FILE PHOTO

A train operator waits for passengers at the Yucca Mountain Exploratory Studies Facility in 2006. The Energy Department plans to ship an average of 3,000 tons of waste to Yucca each year for 24 years.

Yucca Mountain

The sound bites are simple:

John McCain supports plans to store high-level nuclear waste 90 miles from Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain.

Barack Obama does not.

The question being asked by Nevadans who oppose the repository — and by those who support it, too — is whether that matters. What could each candidate actually do about it as president?

The short answer is that the next president may be the only thing standing between train loads of radioactive waste and a hole in the Nevada desert.

First, though, a more nuanced view of where they actually stand:

• McCain “supports Yucca as long as it meets environmental and safety concerns,” according to his Nevada spokesman, Rick Gorka.

McCain’s position harks back to Bush’s vow to let “sound science” dictate whether Yucca was the best site for a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste. Bush has been an advocate of the project.

“Sound science has become, in the nuanced language of nuclear politics, a wink and a nod to say, ‘I’m all for it,’ ” said Democrat Richard Bryan, a former Nevada governor who represented the state in the U.S. Senate for more than a decade. “Sound science is a euphemism.”

McCain wants 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030, a goal that would be much harder to reach without a plan for long-term disposal of the dangerous waste. And he supports waste reprocessing, which is common in Europe but outlawed in the United States over fears it would lead to nuclear weapons proliferation.

• Obama, too, supports nuclear energy as “part of the mix,” although he doesn’t plan to support new plants with federal dollars, at least until safety and security problems are addressed. The industry has said more plants are unlikely without hefty federal support.

Unlike McCain, Obama has said he does not support a plan to store waste at Yucca. He said he thinks the mountain is unsafe as a geological repository. He does, however, say that another long-term storage option will be necessary.

Obama has pledged to lead a search for the safest way to store nuclear waste, said his Nevada spokeswoman Kirsten Searer. In the short term, storing waste at power plant sites across the country is the best option, she said, although it might not be the best long-term idea.

During the 1950s, Congress enticed private utilities to build nuclear reactors in part by agreeing to take on the liability for large accidents at power plant sites, a guarantee no private insurance company would provide.

The federal government also signed agreements with utilities to store their radioactive waste permanently, in part because of concerns it would fall into the wrong hands and be used to make nuclear weapons. The Energy Department was to take possession of the waste by 1998.

The nuclear power industry took off in the 1960s and 1970s. New power plants across the country churned out waste that they stored on site, waiting for the government to take possession.

Toward that end, Congress approved The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, ordering the Energy Department to select at least five storage sites for analysis.

By 1983, the department had nine sites in six states on its short list.

Then the landscape changed. By 1987, the department was considering just three sites, one in Texas, another in Washington, the third at Yucca Mountain.

During hearings in 1986 and 1987, it became clear that a repository would be controversial. When the Washington delegation asked the Energy Department for the data to back up conclusions that a repository in Hanford on the Columbia River was feasible, the department admitted it had lost much of the data, said Bob Loux, former executive director of a Nevada state office that exists solely to fight the project.

It was the first major blow to the Energy Department’s credibility, he said, and one that opponents would refer to when shoddy data gathering procedures were revealed almost two decades later.

As controversy grew, legislation was proposed in Congress in 1987 to scrap the selection process and start a new method of finding a site. But the bill failed.

Instead, Congress went the opposite way. It passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987 directing the department to study just one site: Yucca Mountain.

Opponents of Yucca pointed to the legislation, which they dubbed the “Screw Nevada Bill,” as proof that the site selection process had become political rather than scientific. Nevada in those days was a political lightweight compared with Texas and Washington.

The bill further galvanized Nevada against the project.

The state’s federal lawmakers arose in unanimous opposition and have not wavered.

The state had created the office dedicated to fighting Yucca in 1985. Now, led by Loux, the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency assembled armies of scientists and lawyers to fight the project at every turn, challenging the science and the legislation, and aggressively courting public opinion.

Over the years since, the issue has proceeded on many fronts. The highlights:

Temporary storage

In the 1980s, the Energy Department, wary of the approaching 1998 deadline on waste, looked for states or Indian tribes willing to store the waste temporarily while a permanent site was developed.

The only proposal was for a Goshute Indian reservation in Western Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved an interim storage facility on the reservation in the ’90s.

But after much controversy, the Bureau of Land Management denied an application to transport waste to the site, thwarting the consortium of private nuclear utilities proposing the facility.

A law blocks temporary storage of the waste in Nevada.

When the 1998 deadline for the feds to take responsibility for nuclear waste nationwide passed, utilities began to try to force the issue by filing lawsuits against the government.

Radiation exposure

The single greatest issue with Yucca Mountain is whether the storage would be dangerous to people living nearby, or who live along highways and rail lines over which the waste would be shipped.

In 1992, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which directed the National Academy of Sciences to study what kind of radiation standard the Environmental Protection Agency should enact to best protect people living near the site.

The academy issued a report that said a standard should last as long as radiation from the mountain posed a risk to the public.

In 2001, the EPA finally released its standard. The agency set a conservative exposure limit for the first 10,000 years, but provided no standard for the years that followed.

Nevada sued, arguing that 10,000 years was not long enough. The peak exposure would occur sometime after that, the state said.

In 2004, a court ruled that the EPA must revise its standard. It did so last month, setting radiation limits for 1 million years.

Structural flaws

In the ’90s, flaws emerged in the Energy Department’s assumptions about how water moved through the mountain, according to the Nuclear Projects Agency. The department had thought water moved in what it called a matrix — meaning one rock must be saturated before the next would begin to absorb water. That would mean it would take many thousands of years for water to reach through a thousand feet of rock to where highly radioactive waste was being stored.

At the time, Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules said that if water moved from the site into an environment accessible to humans in less than 1,000 years, the site would be unsuitable, the agency says.

But because the mountain is made up of highly fractured rock, scientists found that water actually moved through the site much faster than expected.

Opponents seized on the finding to argue that radioactive water from the mountain would find its way along a natural course that would take it to nearby Death Valley National Park.

Rather than disqualifying the site, the Energy Department changed the rules, Loux said. Instead the Energy Department must demonstrate that it would meet the EPA’s exposure standard.

The department must also prove that the mountain provides a natural barrier between radioactive waste and the outside world — a hedge against radiation that might escape from the man-made containments. It’s the whole reason the department proposed burying waste in a mountain to begin with.

But opponents say water flowing through the mountain proves the mountain is no safeguard — and that Energy Department-designed canisters would be the only protection.

“It was no longer, ‘Is the site suitable,’ but ‘How can we engineer it to make it work?’ ” Loux said.

He said the issues remain today, and the Energy Department will rely on waste storage canisters and titanium drip shields to protect those canisters from water as the only safeguards.

Quality assurance

In 2005 and 2006, major Energy Department contractor Bechtel discovered disturbing e-mail messages between the department and scientists for the U.S. Geological Survey, a federal agency working on testing at Yucca.

The e-mail suggested that a USGS scientist had fabricated documentation of his work. He was studying how water flows through the mountain.

Opponents say the e-mail supports their main claim about the mountain’s safety.

The e-mail launched an investigation. Eventually, the Energy Department Inspector General ruled that scientists had not actually fabricated data that proved the mountain was safe, although their e-mail suggested they had.

Like a student who can solve a word problem correctly, but cannot explain how he arrived at the answer, the scientists had, essentially, not properly shown their work, the inspector found.

Recent history

On June 11, the Energy Department filed its application for a license to operate the repository. This is a major step, possibly the last hurdle standing in the way of approval.

The application is pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the agency has asked for more information from the department about a federal environmental review of the project, including how ground water will move from Yucca to Death Valley.

Although the law gives the NRC three or four years to consider the application, observers say the proceedings could stretch out a decade or more. And the Energy Department says the soonest the site could be ready to receive waste is 2017.

Transportation

Should the NRC approve the license application, Yucca Mountain could well open for business. However the plan to ship containers of waste across the country certainly will generate a nationwide debate over transportation routes to the mountain. Communities take a dim view of nuclear waste shipments through their back yards.

The Energy Department plans to ship an average of 3,000 tons of waste to Yucca each year for 24 years from more than 120 sites across the country. The shipping plans will not be approved by the NRC, although the waste containers will.

Truck shipments must stay on interstate highways, but carriers — rather than the Energy Department — will determine the routes. The department has proposed a 320-mile rail spur from the Union Pacific main line from Caliente to Yucca.

Right now Nevada, the Energy Department and the Surface Transportation Board are wrangling over who has jurisdiction over the rail line. The department has applied to the transportation board to build the line, but unless it agrees to open it up to other users, the state may have jurisdiction over the line.

Discussion: 27 comments so far…

By Future2012

10/12/08 at 4:47 a.m.

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Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the strong generational health benefit of nuclear power in reducing globe warming. Millions of people stand to live, and live a better life, if greenhouse gases are eliminated.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is that now that a sound safe case has been made in the Yucca Mountain LA accepted by the NRC for a four year approval review the past issues raised have been asked and answered.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is their fear-mongering and that they lied by omission. The fact is that there are no theoretical farmers living 24/7 on the remote site boundary fencepost 11 miles south of the Yucca site at Amargosa Valley that actual could uptake the dose.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the point was made in the R-J on 1-17-2008, that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Bill Richardson held 21 formal draft EIS hearings (9 in Nevada) in 1999 and 2000, to establish that danger from transportation of nuclear waste is less then such hazardous materials as chorine and propane.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the point that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Bill Richardson dug the tunnel at YMP.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the point that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Bill Richardson were in charge back in the 90s when the e-mail issue was happening.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the point that the guy making the case against Yucca is untrained, hack, corrupt, lobbyist Bob Loux who hired unqualified friends to bash science.
By Future2012

10/12/08 at 5:08 a.m.

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The LV Sun appears to be clinging to Barack Obama to save the LV Sun from Yucca Mountain.

But in Brian Greenspun previous own words "Obama is more of a realist, choosing to rely on science to make a decision."

The LV Sun, if they permit an adjudication of the YMP License Application, then their positions on technical facts of the program, have should have nothing to fear from a quality review process.

The LA process continues to establish the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site, and is based on the science of the five supporting national labs and the USGS.

Barack Obama will be running the five national labs and the USGS, and would have get the work of those individual scientists and the peer reviews trashed to to make a decision to stop the project?

Stopping Yucca is not a political decision but a legal and technical decision as played out by the NRC, the five supporting national labs, and the USGS.

Obama has a dilemma with the false promise he is making to Nevada and Senator Reid with regards to Yucca (to garner five electoral votes).

NV Rep. Shelly Berkley let the cat out of the bag when she in a seven minute "assurance" phone call was pleased to note that Obama in Berkley's words (LV R-J 6-21-2008) said "He didn't know how he would stop it." No consideration of science was made.

Obama has enough friends and "state" lobbyist in the nuclear industry to know that if the Feds quit on Yucca without changing the NWPA, that the NEI (through the courts) will get their money ($20 billion plus) back and the NEI can complete the job themselves.

Obama policy statement has a yet to be detailed Long-term Disposal Solution.

Team Reid, Pelosi, and Obama want to stop use of clean coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, and seem to have no 2009 plan to stop the outflow of $700 billion petro dollars per year. There is not another Country on earth going down this doomsday path; certainly not Russia, China, India, or Iran.

Barack Obama has to answer the question. He cannot be allowed to just say "He didn't know how he would stop it."
By Gordon

10/12/08 at 8:07 a.m.

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How to stop it?

CUT FUNDING - STARVE IT TIL IT DIES! I know the funding indirectly comes from the ratepayers using nuclear power, but congress controls the purse.

The solution; Store it onsite in the "ultra-safe" trasportation casks. In time science will come up with a better solution.

Remember, both Republicans and Democrats representing Nevada are against the dump.
By jfnance32

10/12/08 at 8:46 a.m.

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Lets see what happens.

The Democrats now control the House and Senate and yet funding still gets passed for Yucca. In fact, just last month a Democratic controlled House sub-committee voted to fully fund Yucca.

If Obama is the President then I bet in 4 years Yucca will still be in business.

I wonder what excuses people like Gordon will put out then.
By skisailmtb40

10/12/08 at 9:50 a.m.

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When are you morons in the media going to realize that the politicians all say the same thing. No President, including BJ Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Bush 1 nor Bush has promised to SHUT DOWN THE YUCCA MOUNTAIN PROJECT. The Sun's deceptive headline deceptive and is business as usual. Mccain and Obama will BOTH LET WORK AT YUCCA MOUNTAIN GO FORWARD, BECAUSE NEITHER HAS PROMISED TO SHUT IT DOWN. All the rehetoric about "safety and science" is just hot air on both sides. When you get a promise from a presidential candidate to "SHUT DOWN YUCCA MOUNTAIN", let me know. Then they will get my vote. By the way, how come the weenies in the media never ask the question outright, "WILL YOU SHUT DOWN YUCCA MOUNTAIN?" Simple question, simple answer, YES OR NO. Ask that question, AND GET THE SIMPLE ANSWER. Then write your headlines.
By The_Day_After

10/12/08 at 10:02 a.m.

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Perhaps we can send the waste to Arizona?
By Sunlizard

10/12/08 at 10:12 a.m.

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Yucca is based on flawed science and contractors that cut cornors. We met up with DOE and Betchel and found that none of them even had an evacuation plan for small towns if there were a transportation accident.

DOE has never really solved any groundwater contamination issues and they admmitted that the water table is closer than they thought.

I actually witnessed two DOE hired geologists argue in front of a public crowd about the siesmic activity in the volcanic field that Yucca sits on. One said it is inactive. The other said it is very active.

They just dopn't know what the hell they are doing. I live close enough to it to move if it happens. The US Government has no ability to handle high level nuclear waste. The Betchel Ccontartors were actually stupid. They could not answer basic questions about clean up, safety and radiation exposure. I guess they were the lowest bidder...
By jfnance32

10/12/08 at 10:34 a.m.

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To make sure that record is very clear, Obama has promised over, over, over and over again to shut down Yucca...no end's, but's and if's.

If he is President and 4 years roll around and Yucca is still in business then he is either lying now or is stupid now.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/74737...
By Future2012

10/12/08 at 10:47 a.m.

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What Obama said was

"Barack Obama's believes that Yucca Mountain is not an option. Our government has spent billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain, and yet there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there."

You can drive a Mack Truck through this "I Believe" statement

It will be up to the legally set process with the NRC in the lead to settle the science.

At this point in the process, the President does not make the decision on whether the science is acceptable. As the licensing goes forward, this allows the NRC safety review process to establish the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site.

Opponents, if they permit an adjudication their positions on technical facts of the program, have should have nothing to fear from a quality review process.

This will allow Obama's malleable statement that "Barack Obama's believes that Yucca Mountain is not an option. Our government has spent billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain, and yet there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there." to be updated to account for adjudication of the Yucca science.
By Justin

10/12/08 at 1:59 p.m.

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>"McCain "supports Yucca as long as it meets environmental and safety concerns," according to his Nevada spokesman, Rick Gorka."

Will it be the same REGULATORS that make sure of this that McCain has been so effective and outspoken in supporting? Wink, wink.
By Justin

10/12/08 at 2:06 p.m.

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Seriously: McCain is the KING of DEREGULATION.

When I lived in AZ, McCain buckled to the power companies and supported their deregulation. Power companies and McCain's camp argued to the voters that free market competition would make the price go down. Well, needless to say, our electricity prices skyrocketed almost as soon as the DEREGULATION that McCain was pushing passed.

I don't doubt that McCain would also champion environmental and safety deregulation under pressure from the nuclear storage lobby if it meant that looser restrictions would save them money. Beware of John "Stable as Plutonium" McCain folks...
By LT2LV

10/12/08 at 3:41 p.m.

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Send the noo-kew-lur trash to Alaska. Ain't nothing there except moose and snow.
By rexwine

10/12/08 at 4:37 p.m.

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Most people in Nevada don't want the state to be the repository for the nation's nuclear waste.

If you want a nuclear plant so bad, keep the waste in your own state. We don't need the plants here for our own energy; we have enough untapped solar and wind. As well as that old reliable Hoover dam.
By jfnance32

10/12/08 at 5:17 p.m.

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It is funny on how the Sun likes to hide stuff.

They failed to mention that when Congress passed the so-called "Screw Nevada" bill that made Nevada the only state to be a repository for the nation's nuclear waste.....

that is was A DEMOCRATIC CONTROLLED CONGRESS that passed that bill.
By skisailmtb40

10/12/08 at 8:22 p.m.

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Jfnance.... if I want misleading media info, I will read the paper. You said, "To make sure that record is very clear, Obama has promised over, over, over and over again to shut down Yucca...no end's, but's and if's." The article you linked quotes B. Hussein Obama, "Obama said. "What part of 'I am not for Yucca' do you not understand?"
"I am not for Yucca" does NOT MEAN "I will shut down Yucca." Obama's quote is the same thing BJ Clinton, Bush, and all the rest said.
By KeepNVStrong

10/12/08 at 8:51 p.m.

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John McCain to Nevada: "Drop Dead."

John McCain would provide couple of hundred jobs at Yucca Mountain, and commit the country to waiting decades for new nuclear plants while doing nothing in the meantime. Economists project Nevada job losses right away if we open Yucca, in farming and tourism to start with. We don't need Yucca to start leaking before it has negative business impact around the state.

Barack Obama and Harry Reid have a different vision: big renewable energy projects, securing Nevada's energy future and making us an exporter, harnessing geothermal, wind, and solar power. Tens of thousands of jobs in projects already planned for Nevada. Reid's triumph last week in extending the tax policies for renewable energy will bring serious business to Nevada.

John McCain voted no on renewable energy extenders 9 times in the last year. I'm looking forward to voting "no" for him.
By Future2012

10/12/08 at 9:22 p.m.

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Those were the same econ studies contracted for by that guy making the case against Yucca who is an untrained, hack, corrupt, lobbyist Bob Loux.

Remember Bob Loux who hired unqualified friends to bash science and perform bogus econ studies.

Thanks lobbyist Bob.

All we want is "all of the above".

I live here. It is safe. If your that insecure - please do not fly or go to the doctor for a x-ray. Lets get on with it.
By rexwine

10/12/08 at 11:09 p.m.

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There is no reason this project is good for Nevada. Period.

If you live here and support it, it's probably because you're one of the few people being paid off. More likely, you don't even live here.
By dellap

10/13/08 at 6:03 a.m.

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We joke about Alaska but they got one thing right about transporting an "evil" product through their state. Every Alaska citizen receives a check each year for over $1,000! This is collected from the "evil" oil companies!
How come none no one has thought of a similar plan for our Nevadans? Waive a thousand dollar bill in front of them and watch the objections quickly disappear! Go Yucca!
By jfnance32

10/13/08 at 8:21 a.m.

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skisailmtb40 speaks the truth.

He is already covering for Obama.

Obama is "oppose to Yucca". skisailmtb40 says this means he will not shut down Yucca.

skisailmtb40 spills the truth.

Obama's promise is meaningless.

If Obama running for re-election in 4 years then all the pro-Obama people will be making excuses left and right when Yucca is still alive.
By coltakashi

10/13/08 at 9:07 a.m.

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Is Barack Obama telling the people of New York city that he wants the Indian Point nuclear power plant, upstream from Manhattan on the Hudson, to hang onto its spent nuclear fuel for all eternity, and take the risk that some terrorist or an industrial accident will poison the Hudson? Why shouldn't it be placed in a deep repository a half mile underground where the only threat it would pose is to groundwater that is so deep that almost no one uses it, and which is going to be contaminated long before that by the hundred nuclear bomb holes that sit next door?

The New York Times has come out again and again in favor of moving Indian Point's spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain. Are Nevadans writing to the Times and telling people in New York that they need to keep the waste in above ground storage for a million years, rather than put it into the ground 90 miles from las Vegas?

The notion some politicians have that spent nuclear fuel can be reprocessed at every nuclear power plant shows an abysmal ignorance of science and law. Reprocessing is feasible, but it is a potentially hazardous business that needs to be done at remote sites that are not next to major rivers and populations. And there is not enough spent fuel at any single power plant to justify the cost of building a reprocessing facility.

If Nevada weren't consuming vast amounts of electricity to light up the desert for its 24-hour gaming culture, it might be a little less hypocritical about the power it concumes. If Las Vegas were not gobbling up more and more water for the primary purpose of creating golf courses and lawns for its hotels, it might be less hyprocritical in its claims that it worries about affecting someone else's groundwater.

If all the nation's tourists were as risk averse as Nevada is about Yucca Mountain, the gaming industry would dry up. Nevada's gaming industry impoverishes thousands and therefore kills dozens of bankrupt people every year. The Yucca Mountain Site might kill one person in a million years. By refusing to let Yucca Mountain open, hypocritical Nevada's politicians are playing Russian roulette with the lives of millions of people in New York and other states.
By Ardent

10/13/08 at 11:09 a.m.

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rexwine:

I live here, and have lived here in every decade since the 1960s. I support the repository, and I am not being paid off to do so.

Also, you might be interested to know that Nevada gets 15% of its electricity from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in AZ. How much does the dam provide?

Sunlizard:

I don't know when you "met" with DOE, or even what qualifications you have to opine on the substance of such a meeting, but the DOE clearly has evacuation policies simply because it must coordinate and comply with DOT regulations in transporting spent fuel. They may not have had a specific plan for a specific location (because the transportation plans were not finalized at that point), but they clearly have mechanisms for addressing potential accidents, including evacuation plans and funding/training for local first responders.

As far as the water table depth is concerned, I don't believe that any DOE scientist would "admit" that it is closer than expected. That may be the way you wanted to hear things, given your desperate desire to believe that the science is unsound and the scientists corrupt or inept. What they probably said is that the water table level varies from spot to spot due to various natural forces and phenomena, but has an "average" depth of 300 m below the repository.

Finally, I find it hard to believe that any credible geologist/seismologist actually said that the Yucca Mountain region is seismically "inactive." Again, you probably wanted to hear disagreement over a black/white issue, when in fact what you heard was a disagreement over the degree of seismic activity in the region. UNR has been studying the seismic activity in that region for years, and publishing seismic activity maps, so no credible geologist would allege that it is seismically "inactive" (unless that definition meant "no events above a certain magnitude").
By Ardent

10/13/08 at 11:28 a.m.

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dellap:

It's funny that you bring up federal funding for Nevada if it ends up hosting the repository.

Our state officials, such as Bob Loux's right-hand man Joe Strolin, have often said publicly that the federal government doesn't plan to give Nevada one thin dime for hosting the repository.

Others, such as former Sen./Gov. Bryan, have vowed never to accept "nuclear blackmail" (i.e., federal dollars for hosting the repository).

However, as conservative columnist and closet repository supporter Chuck Muth recently reported, there is a proposed amendment to the Leiberman-Warner climate change bill that would provide Nevada substantial federal funds for hosting the repository.

SA 4931 calls for Nevada to receive:

$100 million annually during the NRC review phase (currently and for the next three to four years).

$250 million annually during the construction phase if the repository is approved (three to four years from now through 2017 or 2020).

$500 million annually after the repository is opened and starts receiving spent nuclear fuel.

The only stipulation is that the State cannot use the money to oppose or block the repository in any way (the State can, however, use its own money to oppose or block the repository).

That's billions of dollars in guaranteed income flowing into the State's coffers, promised at a time when our State is facing a ruinous budget shortfall that is impacting its ability to provide basic services to Nevadans (infrastructure, schools, etc.).

And what's going to happen? Our congressional delegation will ensure that SA 4931 never makes it into the Leiberman-Warner bill, and we will never see a dime of that money, and the repository will probably be approved by the NRC and built anyway.

And not only that, our lockstep cowardly local media will never give us the full story of SA 4931 or any other potential source of federal funding, simply because they need to keep us ignorant for propaganda purposes.
By nowoolinmyeyes

10/13/08 at 11:32 a.m.

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Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the likelihood that Future2012 and jfinance32, if not the same person, are in all probability paid hacks and corrupt bureaucrats for the nuclear power industry, and further that they hope to profit big time by the public financing of nuclear power.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the fact that Pete Loux successfully kept the nuclear power industry at bay for more than twenty years, and that the State would have been far better off retaining him while dumping Governor Gibbons.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the fact that wind, solar, and geothermal energy do not produce greenhouse gases, nor the dangers of nuclear energy. Moreover, the same amount of money that the proponents of nuclear energy want for their efforts, will not only produce safer renewable energy but will likely produce it quicker than nuclear energy would come on line.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the fact that private industry would not finance nuclear energy plants on a bet. It wants the public to pay for building the plants, and then it will take care of the profits from there.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the fact that only a small minority of Nevada residents support the establishment of a waste depository at Yucca Mountain. However, if the people of New York want to establish a repository a half mile below the Indian Point plant to put their waste in, the people of Nevada will probably voice no strong objection. Also, if they want to shut down the plant, Nevadan's will probably have the same reaction.

Left unsaid by the LV Sun is the fact that there is a difference between funding and FUNDING. During the Clinton administration the project was not shut down, but it received only "funding," i.e., luke-warm support. During the Bush administration, the project received FUNDING, and the time-table for establishing the dump was significantly advanced. This despite Bush's pledge to be guided only by the science and the known scientific fraud engaged in by the proponents of the dump.

Left unsaid, coltakashi, is that without the flashy lights of Las Vegas, millions of tourists would not come here annually, and hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost. While I may agree with you on the water issue and decry the influence that the gaming interests have in Nevada politics, if people want to enjoy the benefits of a 24-hour gaming culture, it is not up to you or me to deny it to them. Unlike yourself, Nevadan's are not being hypocritical in fighting a nuclear waste dump that could well destroy their economy, and result in death in centuries to come of far more that one Nevadan in a million.
Unlike the sleazeballs that just want to make a buck and the ones conducting the "scientific" studies of Yucca Mountain for the Department of Energy, we are concerned about the safety of Nevadans for millions of years to come.
By Ardent

10/14/08 at 3:22 p.m.

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nowoolinmyeyes:

Also left unsaid is the likelihood that you are one of BOB (not PETE) Loux's unwitting propagandists, regurgitating upon request whatever misinformation you've been force-fed over the years.

The fact is, you probably don't have any room for wool in your eyes; they're obviously clogged with State-sponsored talking points.

To begin with, Bob Loux did nothing more (or less) than mount a low-wattage propaganda campaign whose biggest asset was the gullibility of the public, followed closely by a cumbersome and labyrinthine regulatory system that prevents federal agencies like DOE and EPA from dismissing Loux and his clownish contentions out of hand.

Second, you and your ilk offer a lot of lip-service about "concern for future generations" and such, which we all know is a bunch of rubbish. You are concerned only about your own lifetime, and the whole "intergenerational ethics" argument coming from your side is a flagrant red herring. It may be a serious issue in the abstract, but your anti-repository crowd only invokes it insofar as it serves the general purpose of blocking Yucca Mountain for their immediate perceived benefit.

If you really and truly cared so much about future generations, you and other like-minded repository opponents would also be objecting strenuously to the many examples we encounter daily that show how little we Nevadans care for future generations -- in our water use, our blithe acceptance of hazardous chemicals in our lives, our reckless expansion across the valley, our embarrassingly poor city planning, and so on.

Moreover, if you knew the slightest thing about radiation and took seriously the principle of generational ethics, you would be forced to protest the alarming rise in the use of nuclear medicine (x-rays, CT scans, etc.), which represents a significant increase in total dose, not to mention the danger of radon inhalation in homes. Have you been out advocating lately for stricter radon countermeasures?

I didn't think so. Like most other repository opponents, you are all accusation and no facts. You can't even see the ethical contradictions in your own line of argument because you haven't bothered to read any deeper than this or that talking points memo from this or that anti-repository group.

Why don't you start with one of the NAS studies on ionizing radiation. Then, you might consider reading a serious study of the economic and environmental impacts of solar, wind, and geothermal before you start shouting "Hallelulah."

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