Nevadans know best

Friday, Jan. 27, 2012 | 2 a.m.

The federal blue-ribbon panel on nuclear waste issued its final report Thursday, saying the nation should use a “consent-based approach” in searching for a new place to store the nation’s waste, giving communities and states a greater say in the process.

Hear, hear.

That would be a welcome and drastic change in the way the issue of high-level nuclear waste has been handled in this country. For nearly three decades, the federal government and the other states have tried to make Nevada a nuclear waste dump, putting politics ahead of sound policy.

Nevada has never wanted high-level nuclear waste and vigorously opposed the federal government’s overreaching efforts, yet some members of Congress have crusaded to open a dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, because they want nuclear waste out of their backyards.

The blue-ribbon panel has called for a new approach, one that would look for communities willing to take the dump. This should be the death knell of the Yucca Mountain project, but its supporters have vowed to plow ahead. They have never shown much concern for Nevada nor cared about getting the state’s consent.

In fact, the nuclear power industry and Republican leaders in Congress have ignored the key finding in the panel’s report. A coalition of nuclear power industry officials on Thursday issued a statement once again pushing Yucca Mountain, and Republican leaders in Congress have renewed their efforts to breathe life into the project.

In the past, Yucca Mountain’s supporters have complained that opposition to the dump is “political” and blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to shelve the project.

But their cries of “politics” are pure hypocrisy. The fact is that the Yucca Mountain project is steeped in politics, as the nuclear power industry and its supporters worked behind the scenes to stack the deck against Nevada. In 1987, the process to find a geological repository was short-circuited when powerful leaders in Congress from other states pushed through the “Screw Nevada” bill, which ended the search and designated Yucca Mountain as the nation’s dump. Scientists then went from seeking the best site to trying to make Yucca Mountain work.

In the years since, Nevada has lodged scores of legitimate objections, including scientific (it’s not the best place for a geological repository), safety (Yucca Mountain is a porous, volcanic ridge) and financial (recent estimates put the cost of the project at $100 billion). In response, the nuclear power industry and its supporters have patronized Nevada, pooh-poohing those concerns.

There is a delicious irony in this: Many of the Republican leaders pushing for Yucca Mountain are the same conservatives who love to bash government at every turn. Have they noticed that Yucca Mountain is a government project, complete with massive cost overruns, delays and serious problems? Yet, now they think it will somehow work?

Unfortunately, a few of our state’s Republican politicians have started talking in ways that have eroded Nevada’s once solid political opposition and they seem to be leaving the door open for it. They talk about it creating jobs and being an economic engine, but that’s nothing more than a fantasy. (How many people does it take to baby-sit nuclear waste? And are researchers really going to uproot their labs for Yucca Mountain? Please.)

Those politicians should understand a basic fact: Nevadans don’t want the dump. For too many years, the nation has followed an incredibly expensive and unworkable path to try to deal with nuclear waste. The blue-ribbon panel is correct in seeing that it’s time to go another way.