YUCCA FACTS

Responding to a recent column I wrote for the Nevada Appeal, Lynn Muzzy of Minden, Nevada, had the following letter-to-the-editor published in the paper today…

Commenting on Chuck Muth’s defense of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository, consider that the whole nuclear waste issue is unique to the United States.

William Tucker is a syndicated columnist and expert in this field. He has pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on Fox Business Channel, and elsewhere that Jimmy Carter got a law passed in the ‘70’s preventing nuclear material recycling. He feared terrorists would somehow steal the waste to make bombs. He worried about thieves cracking Fort Knox and killer rabbits, too.

France has safely generated the vast majority of its power from nukes, the waste from which is stored in a room size vault. That’s because even some of the “waste” after recycling can be used in industry or medicine, which doesn’t leave much to get hysterical about.

I support Mr. Muth’s idea, but it would make as much sense to get rid of Jimmy Carter’s misguided law as it would be to ship boxcars of waste to Yucca Mountain. Then we’d get to see if the Greens are really serious about seeking out alternative forms of energy.

My fellow Nevada Appeal columnist, Guy Farmer, inked a column today disagreeing with my recent take on Yucca Mountain, as well as a recent op-ed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal by former Reno Gazette-Journal columnist Ty Cobb. And Las Vegas Sun publisher Brian Greenspan weighs in against Yucca in a new op-ed this morning, as well.

And this is exactly as it should be - open, fair and honest debate on an important issue to our state. Unfortunately, that’s not how it’s always been in Nevada on this matter. In fact, dissenting voices in the past have often been shouted down or outright censored despite the fact that there is far from consensus on Yucca Mountain in the Silver State, contrary to “reprocessed” claims by taxpayer-funded anti-Yucca lobbyist Bob Loux.

So while Mr. Farmer, Mr. Cobb, Mr. Loux and I may not agree 100% on every aspect of Yucca Mountain, the fact that a renewed, far more open public discussion is now underway is a positive development. Nevadans haven’t been helped by burying debate over Yucca Mountain deeper than the waste itself would be buried at Yucca Mountain.

One of the main problems with the debate over Yucca Mountain in Nevada is that so much misinformation is thrown out there without being corrected. For example, the Nevada Appeal published a letter-to-the-editor from Richard Mundy today which asserted that “trains loaded with nuclear waste would currently travel through Las Vegas.”

Not.

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“If you were at the race track and the handicappers told you the odds of a certain horse were 100-1, you’d figure his chances of winning were pretty slim. Well, experts have put the odds of a fatal accident occurring at a nuclear power plant at 300 million-1. Put another way, it’s about as likely as you being run over by a horse in your bathtub.”

- Ronald Reagan, 1975

Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nevada) said this week that “he supports nuclear energy as long as its highly radioactive waste is stored where it is produced,” not at Yucca Mountain. Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday that “About 74 kilograms of uranium leaked two weeks ago from a nuclear waste plant…at the site behind (Sophie Delmas’) mother’s home in Bollene (France).” The report noted that 14,000 people live in Bollene. Some observations…

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Nevada Sen. John Ensign and other elected Republicans in the state continue their lock-step opposition to Yucca Mountain, but as you’ll see from this note from Mark Feest, that sentiment doesn’t run universally throughout the GOP’s grassroots…

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In a surprise announcement today, the Department of Energy requested a $90 billion increase in its budget for Yucca Mountain. That’s right, the DOE is trying to force billions of dollars into the Nevada economy at a time when Nevada’s economy desperately could use a shot in the arm.

But have no fear, Dingy Harry is here!

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Nevada has too many needs to rule out asking
By TYRUS W. COBB
SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL
July 13, 2008

It’s time for the state of Nevada to undertake a neutral, unbiased assessment of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The state’s consistent stance against the project has not permitted a balanced appraisal of the advantages and disadvantages the repository would create for the state.

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“Carl Pope, the executive director of the national Sierra Club, was in Las Vegas on Wednesday and he wanted to talk about…Yucca Mountain,” writes Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston on July 10th. “Ugh. Unlike yours truly, however, Pope is not afflicted with Yucca Mountain fatigue syndrome — and he was wondering whether there are like minds in Southern Nevada who could help swing the election for Barack Obama. That is, with all the new people who have moved here since 2004 — hundreds of thousands — could people be activated by the dump issue? Perhaps. But only if you can find a way to activate them — and the Sierra Club is not T. Boone Pickens, the oilman spending $58 million on an anti-oil campaign. Now if Pope can get Pickens interested in the dump…”

by Tom Henry
Toledo Blade

The next four years are critical for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, not to mention America’s nuclear power industry. Is the industry truly poised for a rebirth? That question begins and ends with what happens at Yucca Mountain, the only site the government has considered for years as the possible host for spent fuel from America’s nuclear reactor cores.

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