Selling out Nevada

Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009 | 2:08 a.m.

Since the federal government announced plans to turn Yucca Mountain into a nuclear waste dump, Nevada’s governors have been unified in their opposition. The state’s vigorous fight has exposed the plan’s serious and dangerous flaws, and Nevada is in a position to defeat the plan once and for all.

Enter Gov. Jim Gibbons.

His proposed budget guts the state’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, which is responsible for pressing Nevada’s case. He cut the staff from seven to two. He also slashed funding for the state’s legal challenges. The attorney general, for example, asked for $5 million over two years and was granted just $186,000 by Gibbons.

Nevada is at a critical juncture in its fight. The Energy Department last year asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to build the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and Nevada needs to put on a strong case to the commission. Nevada also has a series of legal challenges against the Energy Department and has put the department on its heels. Nevada has continually shown the department’s work to support the project is shoddy and incomplete. The momentum has turned against a dump at Yucca Mountain.

President Barack Obama has said he is against the project, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has led the congressional delegation’s effort to stop a Yucca Mountain repository, is preparing for a knockout.

Gibbons is undermining that, and some of his Republican colleagues, particularly state party Chairwoman Sue Lowden, say Nevada should negotiate a deal to drop its opposition in exchange for money.

The plans to transport deadly radioactive waste across the country and stuff it in Yucca Mountain, a volcanic ridge, are dangerous and poorly conceived. This is the time Nevada should be moving to finally defeat the project. Yet Gibbons slashes the state’s efforts and some of his Republican colleagues want to negotiate for blood money, leaving this and future generations of Nevadans with more than 77,000 tons of nuclear waste.

Disgraceful. They should be ashamed. The Legislature should reject Gibbons’ plan.