Congressmen’s willingness to cash in on Yucca Mountain endangers Nevadans

Sunday, March 29, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Two of our congressmen, who are the least experienced in our Capitol Hill delegation, have much to learn when it comes to watching out for the safety, welfare and economic security of Nevadans.

Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei, a pair of Republicans, say they’d want Nevada to cash in on the opening of Yucca Mountain as the final resting place for highly radioactive nuclear waste if experts are convinced it would be safe. If the feds and the nuclear power industry really want control of Yucca Mountain, at least they can throw some money our way — maybe to help fund education or improve our public infrastructure.

In other words, they’re willing to put Nevadans in harm’s way if the money is right. In harm’s way, because nobody can be sure that the site will remain safely benign when filled with this nuclear material. Hardy and Amodei certainly have signaled to Washington and the out-of-state nuclear power industry that they’re open to bringing lethal nuclear waste to within 90 miles of Las Vegas.

We don’t even know where to begin in showing how outrageous their position is.

For starters, how do we trust someone who claims that entombing radioactive fuel rods for thousands of years will be safe? It’s not like there’s a history of this being done elsewhere. The Yucca plan is steeped in engineering theory and assumptions and computer projections. And Nevada’s own exhaustive studies have shown all sorts of problems with this scenario.

It’s not that hard, actually, identifying all the flaws, bad premises and unknown outcomes of filling Yucca Mountain with deadly radiation. Studies of the mountain have found it to be porous, susceptible to sweating corrosive moisture and vibrating with earthquakes.

And it’s no surprise that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would nonetheless green-light the project; it’s the frontman for the nuclear power industry, which would love nothing more than to dump inside our mountain their radioactive leftovers from nuclear reactors out of state. We don’t use nuclear power, but the industry wants to stick us with its still-radioactive fuel rods. What’s wrong with this picture?

Moreover, if Nevada already has concluded that this misguided idea is unsafe, why would we even entertain an argument from someone else that it’s safe? It’s not like we want to err on the side of risk.

To that point, let’s look at how many states back in the 1980s were willing to take the highly radioactive fuel rods off the hands of nuclear power plant operators: zero. Not a one. Especially not Nevada, which already had paid a human toll as the site of atmospheric atomic bomb detonations. Nobody gave much thought to the radioactivity in our sky — “don’t worry” — and, boy, were we snookered.

So when the federal government went looking for a place to bury 77,000 tons of radioactive fuel — stuff so dangerous that the government needed a place to keep it safe for 10,000 years — Congress decided to volunteer Nevada for the job, and we were too politically weak to stop it. With the passage of the politically expedient “Screw Nevada Bill,” Nevada’s nickname might as well have been changed to the Victim State.

The decision to target Yucca Mountain — in fact, an undistinguished volcanic ridge line — was misguided almost from the get-go. The government’s marching orders were to find a mountain so geographically solid that it wouldn’t need an interior engineering job to make it safe. If the government was satisfied with a fixer-upper mountain, there are other mountains out there that would fill the bill — and (bonus!) be closer to more of the nation’s nuclear power generating stations, so the fuel rod caskets wouldn’t have to travel as far.

Sen. Harry Reid, as both the Senate majority and minority leader over the years, has succeeded in stopping the development of Yucca Mountain by starving it of funds. He was incredulous that Hardy would open the door for the use of Yucca Mountain, upending years of united Nevada opposition to that idea.

“Rep. Hardy is living in a world that doesn’t exist,” Reid said. “Opening the door to a nuclear dump in Nevada is not something I will ever accept.

“When it comes to protecting the health and safety of Nevadans from a potential environmental catastrophe, there is no benefit worth bargaining for. Nevada’s own experts, the Nuclear Waste Project Office, have worked for years with scientists and technical experts to reveal that Yucca Mountain is a highly risky, half-baked proposal riddled with technical flaws that guarantee eventual failure.”

Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, said he won’t allow the development of Yucca Mountain. Our other senator, Republican Dean Heller, stands steadfastly opposed to it, too, and has called for absolute solidarity within the Nevada delegation. Rep. Dina Titus feels so strongly on the issue, she said anyone willing to negotiate over Yucca Mountain is nothing less than “a prostitute haggling over the price.” Former Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, fought Yucca Mountain, as did former senator and governor Richard Bryan, a Democrat.

Yucca Mountain “was never a policy determination; it was a political act forced upon the state of Nevada,” Bryan said. “Congressman Hardy would be well advised to sit down and talk to the folks who have been examining this from a Nevada health-and-safety perspective. There are serious concerns that ought to trump any thought of negotiating. If other states thought health and safety concerns could be absolutely addressed, don’t you think every state in the country would be clamoring to have it? The fact that nobody has stepped forward suggests to me that there are serious issues. There is no pot of gold at the end of the nuclear rainbow. It’s a mirage.”

The fact that two junior congressmen from Nevada would be open to filling a nearby mountain with radiation — putting not only Las Vegas’ economy, but the lives of our children, grandchildren and generations of future Nevadans at risk — is stunning.

Our delegation in Washington can certainly bicker over other issues, but on Yucca Mountain, Nevadans expect solidarity, not betrayal, because nothing can be allowed to jeopardize our safe future.