Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

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2008 Elections

Chris Dodd on Yucca Mountain

 

(Editor's Note: Dodd dropped out of the presidential race for the Democratic nomination, following a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, 2007, where he got less than 1 percent of the delegates. See a video of his explanation on his campaign Web site. )

 

Sen. Chris Dodd has supported making Yucca Mountain the nation's nuclear waste repository, but as a Democratic Presidential candidate, Dodd is not in favor of such a move. A speech dated July 9, 2002 and posted on Dodd's Senate Web site indicated his approval and plan to vote in favor of President Bush's 2002 proposal to make Yucca Mountain a national nuclear waste repository. Within Dodd's speech, he made clear that his vote to move forward with Yucca Mountain was not one that gave a free ticket for Congress to transport the waste, but instead was one that ensured that the proposal received sufficient scientific research. But amidst Sen. Hillary Clinton's July 2007 prompt for a Senate hearing regarding Yucca Mountain, Dodd solidified his position as an anti-Yucca Mountain presidential candidate at the opening of his Las Vegas campaign headquarters.

 

In an April, 2007 article in the Sun, Dodd admitted that he had voted in favor of using Yucca Mountain as a national storage site in the past, but said that since his vote, science has proven Yucca Mountain to be an unsafe storage site. But Dodd's campaign has been one that ran on an environmentally sound platform from the onset, and according to Dodd, the positives of nuclear energy outweigh its negative aspects in regards to ending global warming.

 

Las Vegas Sun: Presidential hopeful not willing to gamble on Yucca Mountain (April 18, 2007)

 

— Las Vegas Sun new media intern Jenna Kohler compiled this report.

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