Yucca repository: dead or alive?

Depending upon whom you listen to, the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is still viable, or it's on life support. Personally, I side with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn on this one: The highly toxic federal project is more dead than alive and no amount of lobbying by the powerful Nuclear Energy Institute is likely to revive it.

The nuclear energy lobby, which throws money around like it's going out of style, fired the latest shot in the ongoing Yucca Mountain War last week with an op-ed piece by Institute lobbyist Marvin Fertel, who assured us that "the repository will open and it will be safe." Oh sure, and the moon is made of Swiss cheese.

"There is no question that the Yucca Mountain project has experienced some challenges," (like falsified e-mails between scientists), Fertel acknowledged; "however, work to facilitate its opening is ongoing." But just barely. I'm betting the repository, originally scheduled to open by 2010, will never open and that the U.S. Energy Department (DOE) will be forced to find some other way to dispose of nearly 80,000 tons of deadly nuclear waste, or to seriously consider other alternatives such as reprocessing.

Fertel used the insulting bribery argument that Nevadans should embrace the Yucca Mountain project (although 70 percent of us oppose it) because we'll be showered with federal largesse. "By opposing the repository at every turn, the state's chief executive (Guinn) is risking enormous economic opportunity for the state ..." Fertel wrote. His argument reminds me of how ex-President Clinton's apologists tried to excuse his serial philandering by claiming that his female accusers surfaced only after someone dragged $100 bills through trailer parks. Please! We're not that stupid, or venal.

In August, Gov. Guinn wrote that "Yucca Mountain finally, and deservedly, appears to be headed toward the trash bin of history" and called the fatally flawed project "the latest in a long series of DOE boondoggles ... based on bad science, bad law and bad public policy." The governor noted that Congress is finally shifting its focus from Yucca Mountain "to the concept of interim storage, either at existing reactor locations (there are none in Nevada) or at regional 'consolidation and preparation' facilities." And Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said the project should be put on the "back burner." I agree but it shouldn't be put on the back burner; it should be killed once and for all, and be given a decent burial (no pun intended).

As Gov. Guinn observed in his recent op-ed piece, "Nevadans can be justifiably proud of how the state has pulled together to bring this dangerous, ill-advised and unnecessary project to a standstill ... It has been Nevada's strong and unyielding opposition over the past two decades that has prevented an out-of-control federal bureaucracy from making a mistake of unprecedented proportions." You tell 'em, Governor!

Nevada politicians of every political persuasion " Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives alike " joined together to fight the nuclear waste project shortly after Congress passed the so-called "Screw Nevada Bill" in 1987, designating Yucca Mountain as the only site in the nation to be studied as the future toxic dump site. "Thanks but no thanks," Nevada's elected representatives replied. "Put it somewhere else, preferably in a state that generates nuclear waste."

Fortunately, Nevada has much more political clout in Washington today than it did 20 years ago and the election of Gov. Guinn 1998 and the elevation of Sen. Reid to Minority Leader in 2004 energized the bipartisan opposition to Yucca Mountain. By now, I'm confident that the Yucca Mountain dump will never open as long as Harry Reid and John Ensign remain in the Senate. I'd also note that GOP gubernatorial candidate, Congressman Jim Gibbons, strongly opposes the project but I don't know where Democratic candidate Dina Titus stands on this important issue.

President Bush betrayed Nevada in 2002 when he sided with his nuclear energy industry friends (and campaign contributors) by approving the Yucca Mountain dump despite promising two years earlier that he would base his decision on "sound science." But Yucca Mountain has never been about sound science; instead, it's always been about politics and keeping big campaign contributors happy. So highly paid nuclear energy lobbyist Marvin Fertel is blowing smoke when he tells us how safe the toxic waste dump will be. Remember that he lives all the way across the country in Washington, D.C.

In 1987, politicians could get away with supporting the troubled project on grounds that "Nevada is a desert and no one lives there." They can't use that line these days, however, because Nevada is now a key swing state in national elections and nearby Las Vegas is the fastest-growing city in the nation. Meanwhile, today's politicians have learned that Las Vegas casino moguls also contribute to political campaigns.

Late last year, the new director of DOE's Yucca Mountain project, Edward "Ward" Sproat, said the country should move toward the recycling of nuclear waste and away from the burial of such waste. His statement came after Congress slashed the project's annual appropriation from $577 million to $450 million, a 22 percent budget cut (Bush had requested $650 million). So it's apparent that Yucca Mountain is on life support no matter what kind of propaganda the powerful nuclear energy lobby tries to sell us here in the Silver State. We aren't buying, and never will.

- Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.