End of Yucca Mountain project a win for Nevada and for career of its senior senator
Las Vegas City Life, 2/4/2010 - It couldn't have worked out better if he'd planned it.
Harry Reid has been fighting Yucca Mountain his entire political career, through Democratic and Republican administrations. Bill Clinton vetoed bills that would have hastened its construction. George W. Bush hastily approved it, despite promising to decide the issue on "sound science." (When he did, Reid called the then-president a liar.) Barack Obama promised to end it, but didn't do much in 2009.
Through it all, Yucca lived. Reid cut its budget, stood in the way of its progress, answered its proponents, but he never managed to kill it.
Then came Feb. 1, and things changed.
Obama announced that he was stripping almost all funds from the project, except those needed to close it. Moreover, and more important, the administration was withdrawing the application to run the dump, with prejudice, which means it can't be refiled. The president appointed a blue-ribbon panel to look at ways to deal with nuclear waste, a panel whose members will study everything except Yucca.
Finally, it seems, Yucca Mountain is really dead. And it couldn't have happened at a better time. For Reid, that is.
Although he's reached the most powerful perch of any Nevadan in history, Reid has long suffered at home, winning elections with bare majorities on those rare occasions when he's not up against a sacrificial lamb. He's attacked with regularity in the news and opinion columns of the Review-Journal, which, by way of full disclosure, is owned by the same company that owns this newspaper. And recent polls show a majority -- 52 percent -- don't like him.
Sherm Frederick, publisher of the Review-Journal, likes to ask in print what Reid has really done for Nevada, outside of a pork project here and there. In other words, what good is Reid's power doing us?
Now, we have our answer: Thanks to Reid -- and plenty of other dedicated Nevadans who fought the dump project during the last 23 years -- Las Vegas avoids having a nuclear waste repository for a neighbor. And, every person who lives on or near a route through which waste would have been transported avoids becoming a victim of potential accidents or terrorist attacks.
Some will object that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended, still designates Yucca Mountain to store the nation's nuclear waste. And so it does. That's where Obama's panel comes in; Reid's office says the panel's recommendations may form the basis of a further amendment, a new policy for a new century that eschews burying the waste and finds a more advanced way to deal with it.
It's a win for Nevada, without question. But it's an even bigger win for Reid, who needs some good news in an election year. This is it.
Read the whole article >>
End of Yucca Mountain project a win for Nevada and for career of its senior senator
Las Vegas City Life, 2/4/2010 - It couldn't have worked out better if he'd planned it.
Harry Reid has been fighting Yucca Mountain his entire political career, through Democratic and Republican administrations. Bill Clinton vetoed bills that would have hastened its construction. George W. Bush hastily approved it, despite promising to decide the issue on "sound science." (When he did, Reid called the then-president a liar.) Barack Obama promised to end it, but didn't do much in 2009.
Through it all, Yucca lived. Reid cut its budget, stood in the way of its progress, answered its proponents, but he never managed to kill it.
Then came Feb. 1, and things changed.
Obama announced that he was stripping almost all funds from the project, except those needed to close it. Moreover, and more important, the administration was withdrawing the application to run the dump, with prejudice, which means it can't be refiled. The president appointed a blue-ribbon panel to look at ways to deal with nuclear waste, a panel whose members will study everything except Yucca.
Finally, it seems, Yucca Mountain is really dead. And it couldn't have happened at a better time. For Reid, that is.
Although he's reached the most powerful perch of any Nevadan in history, Reid has long suffered at home, winning elections with bare majorities on those rare occasions when he's not up against a sacrificial lamb. He's attacked with regularity in the news and opinion columns of the Review-Journal, which, by way of full disclosure, is owned by the same company that owns this newspaper. And recent polls show a majority -- 52 percent -- don't like him.
Sherm Frederick, publisher of the Review-Journal, likes to ask in print what Reid has really done for Nevada, outside of a pork project here and there. In other words, what good is Reid's power doing us?
Now, we have our answer: Thanks to Reid -- and plenty of other dedicated Nevadans who fought the dump project during the last 23 years -- Las Vegas avoids having a nuclear waste repository for a neighbor. And, every person who lives on or near a route through which waste would have been transported avoids becoming a victim of potential accidents or terrorist attacks.
Some will object that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended, still designates Yucca Mountain to store the nation's nuclear waste. And so it does. That's where Obama's panel comes in; Reid's office says the panel's recommendations may form the basis of a further amendment, a new policy for a new century that eschews burying the waste and finds a more advanced way to deal with it.
It's a win for Nevada, without question. But it's an even bigger win for Reid, who needs some good news in an election year. This is it.
Read the whole article >>
