Reid a savvy Yucca foe

Friday, Aug. 7, 2009 | 3 a.m.

The proposal to bury the nation’s high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is not quite dead, but it is closer to elimination than ever, thanks to the persistence of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The Nevada Democrat announced last week that the Obama administration and the Energy Department have agreed to cut off funding in the 2011 federal budget for the department’s license application to build a permanent dump at Yucca. That means the application process before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would come to a halt.

The only money that would remain in the budget for the repository would be used to ramp down work at the site with the intent of shutting it down.

“This is a major victory for Nevada,” Reid said. “I am pleased that President Obama has lived up to his promise to me and all Nevadans by working with me to kill the Yucca Mountain project.”

Until the project is officially dead, though, Nevada cannot afford to let up in its effort to kill the dump plan. The potent nuclear power lobby and its friends in Congress are still looking for ways to keep the repository proposal alive.

The nuclear power utilities that generate the waste certainly don’t have Nevada’s interests at heart. They don’t care about the dangers of moving high-level radioactive waste across the country. All they want to do is placate shareholders and ratepayers.

This is one advantage of Nevada having Reid in the position of Senate majority leader. As the most powerful member of the Senate, Reid has masterfully used his influence to make sure a radioactive waste dump that would endanger the lives of Nevadans is not shoved down the state’s throat.

The state is fortunate to have Reid in its corner.