User profile: bag

El Lobo: I happen to be a Democrat. Sorry that you can't deal with the fact that Metman and others like to form opinions based on solid science. I've noticed your tendency to resort to name calling when you lose a technical argument. Grow up.

I'm waiting for the day when El Lobo says something that is both technically correct and relevant. El Lobo is actually correct about Yucca being in an active earthquake zone -- so is Las Vegas and the Strip. All of the those highrise hotels are located in a very active zone -- I never hear Nevada pols worrying about that. The truth of the matter is there is no comparing the risk between a highrise building or for that matter your home and the much lower risk of earthquakes to the repository at Yucca Mountain. Underground facilities are not affected by earth movement they roll with the movement. Properly engineered surface facilities (ie Strip Casinos) do well too, but create a much greater risk to human safety. Please people put things in perspective. The scientist at Yucca have very carefully studied the faults in the region working with local experts from the University system and have designed the facility accordingly. I would be glad to discuss this in greater detail if neccessary.

I just wish we could talk about the real issues and not the make believe "Greenspun Issues." While the Greenspun family wastes millions of gallons of water keeping thier massive home lawns green they chase after phony environmental issues. While they build a giant neighborhood with a railroad spur going thru it (just today I was stopped by a train on Arroyo Grande in Green Valley -- its cargo included doxens of sulphuric acid, sodium hydroxide and chlorine tankers) and they talk out of the side of their mouths about the danger of Yucca shipments (which will travel by rail from Caliente around the northern side of the range complex and never come within 100 miles of Vegas). Amazing.

El Lobo is either new to Nevada or has lackluster political knowledge/skills. First of all Harry Reid is not known as a very good campaigner. He has either lost elections or won by very narrow margins against some pretty weak candidates. That's not to say he will run a weak campaign this go around. He will have gobs of money which he can use to try and reshape his image. If anyone decent runs against him he will have an uphill battle. The polls we have seen seem to be pretty consistent with what I hear on the street. There is a strong sense that he is out of touch with Nevada and isn't an agent for change.

Regarding the list of Republicans who are supporting Reid -- it really wasn't very impressive. I counted around 15 heavy hitters on what was a fairly short list. It was hardly a Who's Who list as El Lobo suggests.

It all comes down to the economy and whether a decent candidate runs who has no real skeltons in her or his closet. I will say Reid is good at finding skeltons and exploiting them -- does that make him a "Great Campaigner" -- I would argue not. Is he a worthy adversary -- sure, no doubt.

Ok. I just watched the testimony online and witnessed the Secretary of Energy demonstrate that he knows zero about the science of yucca mountain. He refers over and over again to the idea of "solidification" of commercial spent nuclear fuel at each reactor location as the solution to the waste management issue. I listened over and over again to make sure I heard this correctly. I made sure he wasn't talking about defense waste or how one has to deal with waste after it is recycled and sure enough he wasn't. This is truly amazing. Anyone who knows anything about the subject knows that spent fuel is a solid ceramic pellet stacked in a solid steel rod. How is it possible that the Secretary of Energy doesn't understand this basic fact? How can challenge the result of 25 years of amazing scientific work at Yucca and not know this incredibly basic fact? Very scary.

Who is this Michael Green idiot?

Virtually all of the scientific work on Yucca was done during the Clinton Administration. That's a fact. For political reasons the Clinton administration held off making the site suitability announcement, but the information was collected and the site was determined to be suitable while he was President. I know -- I worked there and by the way I'm a Democrat.

I have challenged Green to say something fact based about Yucca and he never does instead he makes general attacks on the credibility of statements made by people who actually know what they are talking about. It is very clear that Green has formed his opinions about Yucca and nuclear technolgy in general based on reading the nonsense generated by Nevada politicians and the popular press in Nevada. There is no indication whatsoever that he has a clue about what is really going on -- no sense of context or history.

The man has listened to the screw Nevada drivel for far too long -- probaly doesn't know that it is nonsense. Nevada actually invited the federal government to NOT look at any other sites. In 1975 the State of Nevada, Clark County and others in no uncertain terms told the federal government that the Nevada Test Site was a well understood, excellent location for a repository with a world class work force to undertake this responsibilty. The State actually discouraged the federal government from looking at other sites. Dick Bryan voted for the resolution. Fast forward to 1986 after years of scientific study the federal government decides to do exactly what Nevada requested 10 year earlier. There has been a great deal of spinning and revising of history, but Yucca has always been about science.