SUN EDITORIAL:

Selling out Nevada

Gibbons plans to cut fight against Yucca Mountain, and some in GOP want blood money

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.

Discussion: 12 comments so far…

By Future2012

1/25/09 at 8:02 a.m.

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The LV Sun says "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."

In the run up to Harry Reid's 2010 election race, Harry has declared that with Obama complicit help that he has killed Yucca Mountain, without eliminating the NWPA, and without challenging the science.

Harry can do this with back-room non-transparent Democratic politics.

So why does the LV Sun think that in addition to the millions in annual Federal dollars provided Nevada to address the repository that the State must also throw money at something that Harry Reid has already stopped.

Is the LV Sun worried that Harry Reid will fail in the run-up to his election and that the LA process will continue to establish the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site, based on the science of the five supporting national labs and the USGS.

Why is the LV Sun afraid to permit adjudication of the YMP License Application docketed September 8, 2008 and allow science to make the case on the merits. Opponents, if they permit their positions on technical facts of the program, have should have nothing to fear from a quality review process.

But really. Why would you give more money to Bruce Breslow and State Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

Nevada was embarrassed on 12-19-2008 with the unprofessional quality of the 200 plus questions submitted by Lobbyist Bob Loux and State Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto. Bruce Breslow as a former Sparks mayor and television sports broadcaster claims he can effectively be the new lobbyist against Yucca Mountain.

No more money down a rat hole. Harry Reid has already stopped the project.
By apdp

1/25/09 at 9:42 a.m.

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Amazingly the editor of this paper owns (what I know of) 2 large homes, one in SoCal and one here. He powers these sickening large homes from nuclear power plants Palo Verde, San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. He burns jet fuel during his weekly flights (on his private jet) to and from LA to LV. Yet this poor excuse for a paper continually slams this project and the high technology jobs Nevada needs.

I get the feeling harry like this sap editor want to keep Nevada's populace under educated and a populace without much opportunity other then a casino job. Surely that will make harry's casino friends happy and provide an endless supply of casino workers. Simple economics-more people then jobs available-low wages-more profit.
By davelv

1/25/09 at 9:49 a.m.

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It appears that the Sun editorial staff believes if they write something often enough it must be true.

Nevada Governors in the 1970s wanted Yucca Mountain - they were not against it.

The DOE has not been put on its heels - in fact ever single contention has been rebutted and noted as without standing.

Nevada has not shown the work to be shoddy and incomplete - this is just the words of Loux and his staffers to support their employment. Yes, 3 people out of thousands wrote poorly worded emails - and all of their work was redone.

Finally, how come the Sun never points out that per the EPA Las Vegas receives over 16% of its electricity from nuclear power? Nevadans are not devoid of responsibily for nuclear waste just because a nuclear power plant is not in the state.
By Metman

1/25/09 at 2 p.m.

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It is not a "dump". It is an underground, controlled "repository". It is an engineered tunnel, bored into a mountain to provide an additional 1000 feet of materials to separate mankind from the radioactive materials that now have only about 5 inches of steel and concrete as a barrier.

It is a place where civilization can control and monitor these materials.

A dump is a place where your newspaper will end up tomorrow. Nobody will look over it or care what was written on it. It is buried and forgotten. You are supposedly wordsmiths and should know that using pejoratives like this is simply propagandizing.

Safely storing the nation's nuclear waste materials requires more care and thought than the typical editorial from the Sun.

Don't worry though, because smart people have been working on safely storing the radioactive residuals left over from producing the electricity that run your printing presses.

They have studied, tested and written the results down. They have submitted these studies to a regulatory agency that will review these studies in a lawful, public and systematic way.

Because it is needed, the repository will be built eventually and the waste materials will be safely stored, handled and protected. And the people that are responsible for that whole process can be proud of committing their abilities to meaningful public service.

I could not say the same for the Sun's propagandizing with its continual cheap shot tactics and scare mongering. Your paper and Harry Reid are two of a kind.
By fmillar

1/26/09 at 7:53 a.m.

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One of the most valuable contributions the Governor's Nuclear Waste Policy Office has made over the years is to document scientifically the risks of a massive 30- to 50-years campaign of shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain through the heartland cities of the US. Someone ought to host in Las Vegas the next Nuclear Waste Corridor Cities conference (one was held in Denver years ago) to inform and enlist the concerns of officials from St Louis, Kansas City, Denver, California cities, etc. in opposing the DOE's current planning to use "a suite of routes" ("mostly rail")-- which routes DOE has always refused to specify, for their own public relations reasons. Just seven years after 9/11 is not the time to abandon Nevada's efforts to clarify the huge urban transportation radioactive release risks of the Yucca Mountain project.
By letsciencedecide

1/26/09 at 2:41 p.m.

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fmillar

Let me explain representative routes in terms you can understand. In the year 2020 you are to start monthly trips from Maine to Nevada. Now, 11 years in advance of you must specify the exact route that you will take. Every segment of road, every interstection - including the ones that don't exist today - that is what the State wants DOE to do. Can you do it? Remember you will have to take that exact same route once a month for 20 or more years! Now why do you think the DOE can do it?

The State has documented scientifically to risks of transportation? All they did was take the DOE analysis and tweek it (by selecting higher risk routes) so the overall risk would come out higher.
By stevenc

1/26/09 at 6:37 p.m.

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Why does our State hired guns feel compelled to waste more money on something that has already been declared "dead" by our biggest hired gun, Harry Reid? I completely agree with Gibbons cutting the office to two people. What do they need any more people for anyway since their sole job was to "kill" the Yucca Mountain project. Delcare victory, redirect the funding and move on. The NWPO has already shown that it is incapable of honesty and forthright behavior. I say the smaller it is, the better.

We should be recycling spent nuclear fuel anyway. There are several options open for this to occur, and science is moving toward some very attractive alternate methods. Nuclear power is critical to national security and, despite the hype, Nevadans have been enjoying its benefits for many decades. It is time to come into the 21st century, embrace nuclear power and collect our just rewards for leading the United States in this direction.

Now that I think of it, the NWPO should be reduced to zero people, espeically in these times of budget reductions and what most people would consider higher priorities.

Get smart, Nevada. Listen to Gibbons on this issue. He got it right this time.
By getalife

1/26/09 at 8:14 p.m.

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If Harry Reid said Yucca is dead and he's Harry Reid, the most self-important man in Nevada, then it's dead.

Save the money and do something else with it.

Now for reality, Harry is useless and Gibbons is calling him on it.
By shef

1/26/09 at 9:35 p.m.

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Future generations will see Nevada senator Reid and cohorts as stubborn luddites who obstructed the only sensible scheme for overcoming the looming economic/energy crisis by rapid expansion of nuclear power in the USA. Yucca is essential for this.

Wind and solar are fine for small-quantity energy applications but costs three times more than nuclear energy per delivered kWhr. They can not support heavy industry and feed the vast fleets of future electric plug-in automobiles. Expensive energy storage systems (batteries. etc) are needed to store energy when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow. Non-nuclear energy storage systems are approaching a maximum dictated by physics; one can not store any more electrons per gram of electrolyte - lithium has the higest achievable electron density per unit weight. No wishful thinking can change that fact. Wind- and sand-storms are also big problems for large wind and solar farms. At best, wind and solar can only provide 15% of future energy needs.

Besides coal only uranium is practical and economic for generating electricity on a large scale. But coal should not be burnt if we want to avoid aggravation of global warming. Also coal must be preserved as a raw material for synthesizing organics (plastics, etc) when the oil fields are depleted. With long-proven reprocessing of nuclear fuel and fast breeder technology uranium can meet all global prime energy needs for more than 2000 years.

Without many more green nuclear power plants to provide "mother energy" for manufacturing synfuels and biofuels to replace petroleum fuels, Las Vegas will become a ghost town. Operation of the Yucca repository will be totally safe and provide many jobs. "Serious and dangerous flaws" allegations are total poppycock. This anti-nuclear propaganda against Yucca's operation is based on unsubstantiated fabrications and junk science. Nevada's senators who seem to believe that propaganda are severely mis-informed and should be ashamed to let personal politics prevail over sound engineering science.

Opposing a practical program to rescue the USA from future energy-deprivation and economic collapse coincides with Bin Laden's objective to destroy our civilization. There are some who may not care and want to live in caves again, but most of us prefer today's amenities and comforts which previous generations of America's settlers worked so hard to attain.

Jeff Eerkens, PhD
Adjunct research professor,
Nuclear Science & Eng'ng Institute,
U of Missouri - Columbia
By getalife

1/26/09 at 10:59 p.m.

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Jeff, how did someone with brains find this forum, thanks for the post.

When you say "junk" science you obviously must be aware that Obama wants to use science to bring us out of the dark ages.......except Yucca. Rumors and misinformation trump science everytime.
By Rmoen

1/27/09 at 9:08 a.m.

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I research energy issues -- www.energyplanusa.com -- and live in Nevada. Essentially I'm pro-nuclear power and believe waste isn't the problem it's made out to be. Yet, I'm not in favor of Yucca Mountain (but not because of the brainwashing Nevadans have had to endure). Yucca Mountain was a political solution to a scientific problem. The nuclear industry says it can go many more years without permanent waste storage. Moreover, it does not make sense to ship nuclear waste to Nevada when 96 of the 104 reactors are east of the Rockies. Nor does it make sense to store nuclear waste above the surrounding water table in some of the most recently formed and changing crust on earth. We should be considering expanding the existing WIPP disposal site in New Mexico. It is several thousand feet under the earth in a salt dome that's had no geological activity for a zillion years (or there abouts). I also favor turning nuclear waste into an energy resource by reprocessing it and using it as fuel over-and-over. The waste from reprocessed fuel is only dangerous for hundreds, not thousands, of years.
By davelv

1/27/09 at 10:08 p.m.

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The problem with WIPP is that there is a limit to how thermally hot as well as radioactive a storage canister can be. What is destined for Yucca Mountain can not be put into WIPP because it exceeds these limits unless it is aged for several hundred years someplace else. And no matter what, at the end of the uranium fuel cycle all of the material will need long term storage since the uranium will be radioactive - it just is not feasible to make it not. Further, to call Yucca Mountain which is about 15 million years old "recent" is just not true. I would agree that another repository in the eastern US could be appropriate, but Yucca Mountain has taken 30 years to get this far and is still needed for the Hanford, Idaho and other western nuclear wastes as well as used Navy cores. It should not be stopped.

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