The announcement last week from the Department of Energy recommending nuclear-waste storage at Yucca Mountain does one thing to clarify the debate.
Now, we know it's all political from here on out.
First must come President Bush's decision, which certainly will be to affirm the DOE's recommendation. If Bush didn't want nuclear waste in Las Vegas, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham would have recommended against it -- or at least used a skeptical General Accounting Office report to delay the project.
Then will come Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto, on behalf of Nevada. That sends the issue to Congress, where the House may approve the Yucca Mountain disposal plan. The best chance to defeat it may rest with the Senate, where Harry Reid's influence will come to bear.
Should the plan be confirmed by Congress, it likely will be subjected to court battles leading to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the meantime, though, the anti-Nevada lobbying already has begun, most prominently the form of John Sununu, ex-chief of staff for the first President Bush and now a hired gun for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which wants nuclear waste removed from various locales around the country and concentrated in Nevada.
"If I were advising Nevada long term," Sununu told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "I would suggest they do whatever they have to do politically in a way that doesn't create resentment in the country."
That's good advice, and would support a strategy already started by Reid to concentrate on the dangers of shipment of the nation's waste through dozens of cities.
It was another Sununu comment, however, that rattled our cage. "If Nevada is not willing to do its part in what is part of a national plan for homeland security ... maybe Americans ought to vacation somewhere else."
Talk about your cheap political threats.
Nevadans might as well get used to such comments, because this is likely to be the tone of the debate the rest of the way. However, we'll never expect Nevadans to sit back and play nice when they know somebody like Sununu is challenging their patriotism on behalf of the nuclear-power industry.