Energy Secretary Rick Perry testifies during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on budget on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The man leading Nevada’s fight to block the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump issued a statement Friday making clear he won’t shed any tears over the departure of Rick Perry as President Trump’s Department of Energy secretary.
“Secretary Perry did nothing to fix the broken nuclear waste program,” said Bob Halstead. “Three times he asked Congress for more than $100 million to restart the Yucca Mountain repository project,”
He said Perry is also responsible for the secret shipment of plutonium to Nevada, which made the already rocky relationship between the Energy Department and Nevada worse.
Halstead pointed out that Gov. Steve Sisolak and his five predecessors in that office along with a bipartisan majority of lawmakers and other elected officials have all opposed the “dangerous and unworkable plan for transporting and burying high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain for decades.”
He said Perry’s resignation by the end of the year gives the president the opportunity to appoint some one who recognizes the risks posed by Yucca Mountain and is willing to work toward solving the nuclear waste problem with solutions like those recommended by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.
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