Nuclear Dump in Nev. Gets Bush OK

President Bush approved Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as the burial ground for the nation’s radioactive nuclear waste Friday, and an enraged Gov. Kenny Guinn promptly sued to block the proposal.

“I am outraged, as are the citizens of Nevada, that this decision would go forward with so many unanswered questions,” Guinn said. Nevada has set aside $5.4 million and hired lawyers in San Francisco and Washington to fight the decision in the courts.

In a letter to Congress, Bush said that, based on the advice of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Yucca Mountain is “qualified” to serve as a repository, which he said “is important for our national security and our energy future.”

The state immediately answered by filing a lawsuit in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, challenging Abraham’s recommendation of Yucca Mountain and Bush’s acceptance of it, on the grounds that the site doesn’t meet Congress’ criteria for a nuclear waste repository.

“Now the real battle will begin,” said John Ensign, Nevada’s Republican senator.

Nevada’s other senator, Democratic Whip Harry Reid, said Bush “has betrayed our trust and endangered the American public” by deciding to ship 77,000 tons of nuclear waste cross country to the bulbous mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Reid noted that when Bush campaigned in Nevada in 2000, he promised to make a decision based on science instead of politics.

“Today, President Bush has broken his promise,” Reid said Friday. “All Americans should be concerned, not just because he lied to me or the people of Nevada and indeed all Americans, but because the president’s decision threatens American lives.”

Guinn, a Republican, said he would formally oppose the development of Yucca Mountain by exercising his “notice of disapproval.”

The governor has 60 days to reject the project, and he said Friday that he was trying to determine the best timing. Once he vetoes the president’s decision, Congress has 90 working days to overrule him by simple majority votes in both houses of Congress.

By delaying his veto, Guinn said, Reid and Ensign will have more time to lobby fellow senators to support Nevada.

Reid and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) have pledged to block congressional support for Yucca Mountain but have conceded they are unsure of their chances.

Bush’s decision was “premature and irresponsible,” Daschle said Friday. “This isn’t a political issue; it’s a public safety issue.”

Opponents of the nuclear waste dump--including Nevada’s politicians, environmentalists, scientists and anti-nuclear advocates--have long braced themselves for Bush’s announcement and renewed their vows Friday to fight the decision.

Their actions include lawsuits alleging that the Energy Department has ignored its congressional mandate to find a geologically sound burial ground and grass-roots campaigning in concert tours by Bonnie Raitt and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

The battle line over Yucca Mountain will be drawn between the states that will benefit from sending their nuclear waste to Nevada and those states that don’t want casks of radioactive material traveling along their highways and railroad lines.

Abraham has said the risks of transporting radioactive waste to Nevada are outweighed by the dangers of leaving the material at 131 nuclear power plants in 39 states around the nation--at sites within 75 miles of towns and cities in which 161 million Americans live. Nuclear waste from military installations also will be shipped to Nevada.

Based on preliminary planning, nuclear waste will travel through 42 states on its way to Nevada, frequently in amounts greater than what is generated in some of those states’ own nuclear plants.

Even assuming the nuclear waste can be delivered here safely, Nevada officials complain that Yucca Mountain offers no geological safeguards against radioactive leakage.

The Energy Department has conceded in recent years that the treeless Yucca Mountain--a volcanic ridge that rises 1,300 feet above the desert valley and is broken with 34 earthquake faults--is not sufficient by itself to contain radioactivity.

The material will be stored in vaults buried in tunnels deep inside the mountain, with the government’s expectation they will remain safe for 10,000 years.

Some scientists are worried that water trickling through the mountain will corrode the casks and that radiation will seep into the desert aquifer.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she was disappointed by Bush’s decision and was concerned that ground water contamination “may pose a serious threat to the health and safety of Californians.”

The Government Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative arm, concluded in December that nearly 300 scientific and engineering questions remain unanswered and that the government’s hope to open the facility by 2010 is unrealistic. It said the government doesn’t know how long it will take to prepare Yucca Mountain and at what cost.

Even if Congress approves Yucca Mountain this year, the repository must be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, prompting further scientific debate.

Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s lobbying organization, said he is confident Congress will override Guinn’s veto and endorse Yucca Mountain. “We don’t think there will be a serious problem getting a decision,” he said.

Congress in 1982 promised the nuclear power industry it would find a place to store its radioactive waste by 1999. Since 1987, the only venue under consideration has been Yucca Mountain, which straddles the Nevada Test Site where 928 nuclear tests occurred between 1951 and 1992.

Guinn said Nevada has learned its lessons in dealing with the federal government over the years and is wary of its promises that Yucca Mountain is safe.

“In the 1950s, we took the government at its word when they said underground testing would be safe,” Guinn said. “We said, fine, OK, we’re patriotic. Then they started above-ground testing and said, oh, it’s safe, you can go out on the hill and watch.

“Well, we found out they weren’t right,” Guinn said. “We’re a much bigger state today--the fastest growing in the nation--and we have an obligation not only to ourselves but to our neighbors to fight this.”

The population of the Las Vegas Valley is about 1.4 million people today, more than double what it was when Yucca Mountain was targeted as a dump site 15 years ago.

The casino industry--the state’s biggest business--is also opposed to the use of Yucca Mountain, although it has not yet put much money into the fight.

“In all our conversations with members of Congress, we’ve argued that alternatives need to be found,” said Alan Feldman, spokesman for MGM Mirage, the largest casino operator in Las Vegas. “But the problem is, the pro-nuclear industry has spent so much money on this, we couldn’t dream spending that kind of money. What we might try to do now may be too little, too late.”

He observed, however, that any kind of catastrophe at Yucca Mountain would doom the state’s economy. “Tourism in Chernobyl has been pretty bad in recent years,” he said.

The government has spent more than $4 billion--and by some estimates, as much as $7 billion--studying the site. Abraham recommended to Bush on Thursday that the site be approved because it is “technically suitable” and “the science behind this project is sound.”

The president wasted little time in throwing his support behind the recommendation, saying that nuclear energy, the second-largest source of U.S. electricity generation, “must remain a major component of our national energy policy in the years to come.”

But sending its waste to the outskirts of Las Vegas, said Mayor Oscar Goodman, will expose “millions of Americans in 43 states to potential nuclear holocaust.”

“All it takes is one terrorist with a TOW missile obtained on the black market to take out a truck carrying this deadly substance, and we get Chernobyl in our backyard,” Goodman said. “This is the stuff of our worst nightmares.”

One of Nevada’s lawsuits, filed last summer, challenges the assumptions and adequacy of radiation leakage standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Another lawsuit, filed in December, alleges that the Energy Department violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 by ignoring the requirement that a site’s geology provide the primary containment of radioactivity.

Both lawsuits are pending in federal appellate court in Washington.

Nevada officials have tried to block Yucca Mountain on bureaucratic grounds--by denying the Energy Department water rights at the site. The department has sued, and that case is pending in a Las Vegas federal courtroom.

More lawsuits are planned, including ones alleging that the federal government has violated its own procedural laws by prematurely adopting an environmental impact study of the site.

“Our best efforts will be in court,” Guinn said, “where we can go before a judge who will look at the facts and not whether we’re a small state going against the federal government or the nuclear industry’s political machine.”

“This is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” Guinn said. “It’s Nevada going against 39 states that produce this material.”

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Gorman reported from Las Vegas, Gerstenzang from Washington.