Long Odds In Vegas

Abraham's Valentine's Day present to the Silver State was a recommendation to Bush that Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, be developed as the country's first geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. Abraham said he based his decision on 20 years' and $4 billion worth of scientific studies. The project would cost $58 billion, with the first waste shipments reaching Yucca Mountain in 2010. The secretary describes the 5,000-foot-high mountain ridge in the Nevada desert as "a geologically stable site, positioned in a closed ground water basin, isolated on federally controlled land, housed approximately 1,000 feet underground, and located farther from any metropolitan area than the great majority of less secure, temporary nuclear waste storage sites that exist today."

Included among the shipments would be spent commercial nuclear fuel that began as bomb-grade plutonium. In Energy's master plan, two plants would be built to convert plutonium from disassembled nuclear bombs to mixed-oxide fuel that commercial reactors could use. The conversion would take place at the Savannah River Site, an Energy Department weapons plant near Aiken, S.C. The site would get the waste that is now stored in temporary surface facilities at 131 sites in 39 states.

Nevada lawmakers, especially Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., John Ensign, R-Nev., and GOP Gov. Kenny Guinn, have a few objections to Energy's plan, to put it mildly. They've panned Abraham's decision, accused Bush of going back on his word, and launched a multimillion-dollar campaign aimed at halting the Yucca Mountain project. Senate Majority Whip Reid has called Bush a liar and pointedly noted that Gore would be living in the White House had Nevada not voted Republican in 2000. Moreover, "The president has created 100,000 targets of opportunity for terrorists who have proven their capability of hitting targets far less vulnerable than a truck on the open highway," Reid said in a statement released to the media on Feb. 15.

Abraham argues that "one safe site" is more essential to homeland security than the dozens of facilities now scattered across the nation. "Prudence demands we consolidate this waste from widely dispersed above-ground sites into a deep underground location that can be better protected," he said in an opinion piece published by The Washington Post on March 26. The administration has received strong backing from the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute, an 8-year-old self-described "policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industry." President Joe F. Colvin said in a February statement that Bush "acted deliberately and responsibly to pursue the federal government's obligation to the American people to isolate and safely dispose of used nuclear fuel."

Abraham returned the favor, noting in his newspaper piece that nuclear power "provides 20 percent of the nation's electricity, emits no airborne pollution or greenhouse gases and now gives us one of the cheapest forms of power generation we have." "Securing these benefits requires finding a permanent, safe and secure site for nuclear waste," he wrote, adding that Yucca would meet tough Environmental Protection Agency standards for 10,000 years.

By law, Gov. Guinn had 60 days to veto Bush's Feb. 16 decision authorizing construction of the site. He did so, vowing, "Yucca Mountain is not inevitable." At the same time, there are indications that even some back home feel differently. Fighting the feds on Yucca Mountain "would be like sending me into the ring to fight Mike Tyson," state Sen. Joe Neal told the Las Vegas Sun.

Guinn's veto has set the stage for Congress to settle the matter this summer. Under the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Nevadans will need to win a simple majority in the Senate (51 votes) to uphold Guinn's veto. Collecting the votes will be anything but simple, however. Both sides have launched massive public relations campaigns, and big batters dominate the lineups. Former White House chiefs of staff John Podesta and Kenneth Duberstein are working for the Nevada delegation; the first President Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, and 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferrarro are lobbying for the pro-Yucca nuclear industry.

The Nevadans' case was bolstered by a March General Accounting Office report (GAO-02-539T) that raised several uncertainties about the proposed repository. On March 21, GAO Natural Resources and Environment Director Gary Jones told the Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality that Energy "is unlikely to achieve its goal" of opening Yucca Mountain by 2010. Jones said the agency isn't prepared to submit an acceptable license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within the statutory limits that would take effect once Congress approved the site. Jones also said it is uncertain whether the department will be able to obtain the funding required to open the site in eight years. Energy "does not have a reliable estimate of when, and at what cost, a license application can be submitted or a repository can be opened because [the department] stopped using its cost and schedule baselines to manage the site investigation in 1997," Jones told legislators.

In April, Guinn came to Washington and, flanked by mock green highway signs warning "Radioactive Roads Ahead," predicted gruesome accidents if Energy begins trucking radioactive waste past schools, churches and neighborhoods en route to Nevada. The waste will come from Navy submarines, aircraft carriers and other defense programs, as well as the country's 103 commercial nuclear power plants. Reid also has raised questions about the safety of the containers used to carry the waste, claiming that the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are relying on small-scale models and computer simulations, not "full-scale physical tests of these nuclear waste casks."

In March, a survey by Washington-based Ipsos Public Affairs found that 53 percent of Americans didn't know enough to express an opinion on burying radioactive waste beneath Yucca Mountain. Of those who did, 23 percent were for and 24 percent were against. The survey found "an enormous gender gap," with men far more likely than women to support the idea. That obviously excludes Reid and his fellow Nevadans, the gaming industry, and even allies such as Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

"Coming soon to a highway near you," Reid says ominously, "the deadliest substance known to humankind."

In case their position wasn't clear enough already, Nevada officials recently took advantage of expiring permits to cut off water supplies to the Yucca Mountain project. An Energy Department spokesman shrugged, "We have no need to draw water for operations right now, and we're going to abide by the law."