Keeping up the fight

Sunday, March 15, 2009 | 2:08 a.m.

Now that the Obama administration has followed through with a promise to strip federal funding from a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, many of the project’s ardent supporters have begun throwing in the towel.

The Washington Post, which has supported burying nuclear waste in Nevada, wrote in an editorial last Sunday that “the Yucca Mountain project is dead.” At a Senate Budget Committee hearing Wednesday, ranking Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said: “I don’t want to save Yucca. I accept the fact that may not be viable.”

The most stunning comment, though, came from Alex Flint, senior vice president for governmental affairs of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Referring to the nuclear waste now stored at reactors, Flint was quoted on National Public Radio Wednesday as saying: “In many ways, we’ve reduced the urgency of a need to find some other solution for this material. We can definitely deal with this material for decades or hundreds of years. It would be ideal to come up with some eventual disposition proposal in this regard, but we have a lot of time to figure that out.”

That makes it sound as though the nuclear power industry admits it has no valid reason to shove the dump down Nevada’s throat, just as we have been saying all along.

There is no denying that the course has shifted in Nevada’s favor ever since President Barack Obama took office. The Obama administration has said it is time to look for alternatives to Yucca Mountain, a point reiterated Wednesday by Energy Secretary Steven Chu in an appearance before the Senate Budget Committee.

On Thursday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., introduced a bill that would establish a nine-member blue ribbon commission of experts appointed by Congress who would have two years to make recommendations on alternatives to Yucca Mountain for storage and disposal of nuclear waste.

The commission, which would be made up of five Democratic and four Republican appointees, would explore everything from dry cask storage at reactors to reprocessing of the waste and report its findings to Congress. Security issues surrounding temporary storage of the radioactive waste would also be discussed.

As Reid told his colleagues on the Senate floor, the commission “will create a process that will help our nation take a critical step away from the failed Yucca Mountain policy.” The bill also represents a good faith effort to show that Congress will not turn its back on the operators of nuclear power plants and their ratepayers.

“The government’s decades-long focus on Yucca Mountain has left us barren, with very few good proposals for dealing with nuclear waste,” Reid said. “Now that President Obama and Secretary Chu have taken Yucca Mountain off the table, we need to begin looking closely at new ideas. We should even dust off some older ones that have been ignored for far too long.”

It has been an incredibly tumultuous journey for Nevada since 1987, when Congress designated Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the only place the federal government would study as a potential dump for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste. That designation set up a classic David versus Goliath confrontation, with Nevada and its small congressional delegation playing the underdog against the powerful nuclear energy industry and its supporters in Congress.

From the beginning, though, Nevada has been on the correct side of the argument. The state has effectively made the case that the earthquake-prone mountain is geologically unsafe for the storage of deadly radioactive waste and would place Nevadans in grave danger of catastrophic exposure. The problem of how to safely transport the waste from reactors throughout the nation to Yucca Mountain has never been solved.

By refusing to give up the fight, Nevada persevered and now stands on the brink of victory.

Despite such extraordinary developments, which could made possible only by Reid’s influence as Senate majority leader and Obama’s unwavering commitment to protect Nevadans, it is still premature for the state to celebrate and pronounce Yucca Mountain dead.

Until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission denies the pending Energy Department licensing request to build a permanent dump at Yucca Mountain and until the nuclear power industry abandons its pro-Yucca campaign, Nevada has an obligation to its residents to continue its fight in opposition.

That means the Nevada Legislature should continue to provide the maximum funding necessary to fully operate the state’s Nuclear Projects Agency, which leads the opposition effort. The Legislature also should provide the attorney general’s office with the funding necessary to cover all legal costs associated with that effort.

Now is not the time for Nevada to let its guard down.