JOHN L. SMITH: County Commission's slings and arrows add little to anti-Yucca fight - News

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Jun. 04, 2008
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JOHN L. SMITH: County Commission's slings and arrows add little to anti-Yucca fight

JOHN L. SMITH
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Yucca Mountain: Nuclear Waste in Nevada

If only Tuesday's County Commission meeting had been one of those summer blockbuster superhero action movies, the commission's collective criticism of the Yucca Mountain Project might have packed a bigger punch.

Zap. Boom. Pow.

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Nevada saved from the forces of evil in two hours, including credits.

As it turned out, the commission's gesture was more like a good scolding from Ben Stein.

Sincere, but droning.

Granted, the marathon fight by featherweight Nevada against the behemoth Department of Energy's nuclear waste repository plan has gone on too long to provide us with many surprises. More than $6 billion has been dumped into the proposed facility 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas since that spot in the Nevada desert was singled out for study in 1987. Since then, Nevada politicians from Clark County to Capitol Hill have been unanimous in their vilification of the plan to bury more than 77,000 tons of radioactive waste. (Escalating cost projections set the final price tag at as high as $80 billion. I'm betting the over.)

Nevadans have won several rounds over the years, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has blocked its funding and stamped it one gigantic road kill, but its supporters march on. On Tuesday, the DOE submitted its Yucca license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has three years to review the 17-volume, 8,647-page monster weighing in at 110 pounds.

"This application represents the culmination of over 20 years of work by some of the nation's leading scientists, engineers and technical experts," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said. "We have done our level best."

But the DOE's best will never be good enough for Nevada, where 75 percent of the citizens oppose the dump and many think it will be dangerous and -- dare it be said in this slumping economy -- lower property values. (Interestingly, those who oppose Yucca don't appear to dislike it so much they've ruled out voting for John McCain. Give or take a political waffle, he favors the project.)

The tireless anti-Yucca brigade counters that the process is riddled with hundreds of examples of flawed science and unfairly singles out Nevada. Even though a federal court ruled the DOE must develop a 1 million-year safety standard, a practical impossibility, that hasn't stopped the DOE.

While Reid and the rest of Nevada's congressional delegation have fought the political battle in Washington, Irene Navis of Clark County's Nuclear Waste Division has been busy stirring it up on the local level. At times it's hard to tell whether the county entity is more than a well-funded cheerleader for the underdog Yucca fighters, or plays a more important role; but through the years the Nuclear Waste Advisory Committee and the County Commission have never failed to throw pebbles at the giant.

Before voting Tuesday to continue fighting the good fight legally and with public relations, Commission Chairman Rory Reid remarked that through the years Clark County had issued seven resolutions criticizing the Yucca project.

Imagine. Seven tersely worded statements and still the DOE keeps coming.

What next, stern rebukes? Hard stares? The silent treatment?

Sorry for the momentary lapse of cynicism. I know sarcastic shrugs and ironic eye-rolling go generally unappreciated in the anti-Yucca camp. Their job is hard enough without smart alecks cracking wise from the cheap seats.

Commissioners Chris Giunchigliani, Chip Maxfield, and Susan Brager joined in the collective jeer as they listened to Navis mark the solemn occasion with a renewed vow to continue to fight.

But how best to do that from the sidelines of the debate? The county already has a division and a legal liaison with the district attorney's office. Navis suggested expanding the legal effort by adding an outside attorney while increasing public awareness of the dangers of the project.

She also noted that the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which has slated 319 miles of railroad track to help move the spent nuclear fuel to its expensive hole in the ground, also was worthy of the county's federally funded time and attention.

And so it went on what a cynic would consider a dark day in Nevada's Yucca Mountain fight.

Except that, in Nevada, no one listens to cynics on this issue.

And the county never runs low on anti-dump resolve.

Take that, forces of evil.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295.

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Please enter your name Name: Please enter your email Email: Please enter a comment COMMENTS : (word count limit is 300) You have reached the maximum number of words allowed Current Word Count: Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background. Genius wrote on June 06, 2008 05:01 PM: What a missed golden opportunity when you have (had) the golden calf dumped right into your laps. I mean this fantastic project would provide meaningful high paying jobs, research ops for UNLV (4th tier ranked university, a disgrace with all this money in town), paid for community projects, roads, hospitals, given teachers big pay raises and provided new schools. How stupid can our moronic politicans be to take the stance of scaremongers. Ridiculous. Some stupid people think an earthquake will destroy YM, however, it would have to be of Biblical proportions and I don't think Las Vegas would survive that kind of earthquake. It's so far north of Las Vegas, you wouldn't have to worry about it for generations. Take the waste charge the nuclear industry tonnes of money. Every Nevadan (legal) would get a $2,000 stipend each year, tax free. Build a Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MOX plant) next to YMP and then use the waste to make new fuel rods for the power reactors (recycling) and sell it right back to the nuclear industry... We could get 'em coming and going. Political scaremongering an UNEDUCATED public (CCSD graduates, no doubt)is not the ideal process. Perhaps we need to elect people who can actually THINK and are trained in the maths, sciences and engineering? But where do we find them? Genius wrote on June 06, 2008 04:51 PM: SHOW ME THE GOLDEN PLATES! and then I'll BELIEVE this nonsense. The Prohet wrote on June 05, 2008 01:04 AM: Joseph Smith and all of his sheep had to stop screwing little girls, ah I mean marrying them, and ah of course J man was the prophet and all, ya know...you can especially tell he was the prophet by his translation of the golden tablets into a really bad attempt at Old King James style English...you know God decoded them in Old King James style English to J man, I mean a really bad attempt at King James English, because that's how they talked in Utah at the time...hey wait a second...they didn't talk that way back then, they talked American English...maybe ole Joseph Smith was pulling a fast one on us by trying to sound all biblical and all, cause God wouldn't have talked to him in a bad version of King James English, God would have used the vernacular of the day...that dirty old man just wanted to get some extra on the side and used idiot illiterate followers who had only heard the bible in King James versions, so ole J Smith had to try and copy it...don’t' believe me? Read the book o Mormon; see fer yerself...oh yee of little faith, ye. Yep, read REAL King James English in the Bible or elswhere, then, compare the grammer and writing to the book o morman and you will see how idiotic the whole idea really is…I mean come on. John O'Neill wrote on June 05, 2008 01:04 AM: John Smith is an IDIOT! RJ, PLEASE FIRE HIM! Jim Nance wrote on June 04, 2008 10:15 AM: Reid is one of the top powerful person in DC. Why, has Reid not killed Yucca? The Democrats control both houses. Why, has the Democrats not killed Yucca? I guess Reid and the Democrats do not care about Nevada. Mama Bear wrote on June 04, 2008 08:33 AM: Yeah, Rick, fair and balanced when it comes to known hazardous materials and frequent episodes of human error by the DOE and their cronies? Actions speak louder than words, and the decades of mismanagement by DOE, et al, speak volumes!!! douglas wrote on June 04, 2008 06:44 AM: those who resist the harvesting of nuclear and other, "available, domestic* energy sources, discard the ability to complain about the resultant cost leaps in imported energy sources. that's of course if they are honorable. Willard Roker wrote on June 04, 2008 06:34 AM: The Nevada Test Site is one of the most radioactive contaminated place on the Face of the Earth. The Yucca Mountain Project is the only viable economic project possible. If you have a better idea on how to develop NTS lets here it. Sally Bright wrote on June 04, 2008 06:32 AM: John, your far left liberalism is showing, like it always is, and it stinks. You say seventy five percent of Nevadans oppose it. Did you have an election that I missed? Guess not, you just invent the crap you write. Rick Marshall wrote on June 04, 2008 05:10 AM: What is interesting is that most writers generally do not include the comments of the Board of County Commissioners where the Yucca Mountain Project is located - Nye County, nor do they include studies conducted by the Nye County Nuclear Waste Repository. Most of the writers concentrate on the Clark County Board of Commissioners. I wonder how many of the Clark County Commissioners have taken adbvantage of the tour offered by Yucca Mountain? And I thought journalism was supposed to be fair and balanced.