IBLV editorial:

Remaining defiant

Nevada must keep up Yucca fight

Fri, Mar 20, 2009 (2 a.m.)

Nevada is finally making significant progress in its decadeslong fight to prevent the federal government from building a dump for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

President Barack Obama has made good on a campaign promise by stripping funding for the dump in his budget and has announced that the time has come to look for alternative ways to dispose of the radioactive material.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., came up with a great idea to search for those alternatives through a bill they introduced last week that would create a nine-member blue ribbon commission. The commission, which would include five Democratic and four Republican appointees, would have two years to make recommendations to Congress on alternatives to a Yucca Mountain repository.

Topics that would be explored by the commission would include dry-cask storage at reactor sites, reprocessing of the waste and security issues associated with temporary storage. Reid said the commission would help the nation “take a critical step away from the failed Yucca Mountain policy.”

But Nevada cannot yet give up its fight.

There is still the Energy Department’s pending licensing request before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a permanent dump at Yucca Mountain. The nuclear power industry, while conceding lately that a Yucca repository looks grim, has not totally withdrawn its support.

That is why the Nevada Legislature should continue to fully fund the dump opposition effort through the state’s Nuclear Projects Agency and should provide the attorney general’s office with the money it needs to cover legal costs.

Nevadans can taste victory in this hard-fought battle against the dump, but the fight is not over yet.

Discussion: 3 comments so far…

By jhv

3/20/09 at 5:36 a.m.

Suggest removal

NV has made the bed, pull out all of Yucca funds. If I was the DOE I would also assure I would not spend one more penny in Nevada. Find a state that wants the funds and work and then put a plan together that works. Let NV find its similar fate with its neighbor California. Maybe together both of these states can increase pollution, crime, jobless rates and decrease school funding and state capital.
By Metman

3/20/09 at 12:47 p.m.

Suggest removal

No. The fight is not over yet. It will not be over. This project will be built. It has to be built, to protect the vast majority of people in the United States. A place many of us call home, even before we moved to Nevada, where 2.7 million people out of 300 million currently live.

But if Nevada's backwater politicians insist on making Nevada a place where people can only find jobs in the gambling industry, it may find itself with a population much smaller than that quickly.
By LV4LIFE

3/20/09 at 1:11 p.m.

Suggest removal

Nevada was bullied and pushed into Yucca by govt. officials whose home states were better suited for the site, Texas being one of them. Yes thats right build a neclear dumping site as close as you can to one of the largest fault lines in the country. Thats keeping america safe!