Nevada offers nuclear license plates

["Jim Hoerner" <jim_hoerner@HOTMAIL.COM>]

[Nevada State Slogan - Nevada:

Nevada - Home of thousands of one-amred-bandits, 70,000 tons of high level 

waste, and a few three-eyed jackrabbits. - JH]





Nevada offers nuclear license plates

KEN RITTER

Associated Press Writer



LAS VEGAS - Even as Nevada officials fight against their state becoming the 

nation's nuclear waste dump, authorities are offering license plates 

depicting a nuclear blast.



The fund-raising plate, which honors Nevada's atomic past, has been 

criticized as ill-timed and inappropriate. Others don't mind the idea of 

cars with mushroom-cloud license plates sharing roads with tractor-trailers 

hauling radioactive waste.



"Nevada being Nevada, this is a unique subject," said Rick Bibbero, 55, a 

real estate agent who won $500 with his design for the license tag.



Besides the mushroom cloud, the brown and purple plates show the 

nucleus-and-atom logo for atomic energy and Albert Einstein's formula for 

the theory of relativity.



Nuclear testing was conducted above and below ground from 1952 to 1992 at 

the Nevada Test Site, the federal reservation north of Las Vegas that, at 

1,375 square miles, is larger than Rhode Island. More than 100,000 workers 

helped develop the nation's nuclear arsenal in Nevada, and more than 800 

fell ill for their efforts.



"You wouldn't find California trying to memorialize something like this, but 

this is our past," said Bibbero, who said he is neutral on the Yucca 

Mountain project.



Under the Yucca Mountain plan, the federal government will entomb 77,000 

tons of highly radioactive waste beneath a volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest 

of Las Vegas.



Kalynda Tilges, of Citizen Alert, an outspoken opponent of nuclear testing 

and the Yucca Mountain repository, had a word for the license plates: 

"Abomination."



"If they're talking about the legacy of the Test Site, I don't think they 

should use a mushroom cloud unless they show what it did to the people who 

live here and worked out there," Tilges said. "It's not a pretty thing."



State lawmakers approved the plates last year, and the bill's sponsor, 

Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, said she recalled little opposition.



"This is an important part of Nevada history, and national and international 

history," said Titus. "I think Nevadans think testing was patriotic. It was 

done for the good of the country during the Cold War."



http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/nation/3143407.htm



--

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half-car-length in front of you signals to get over, slow down.  Smile and 

say "hi" to the folks you pass on the sidewalk.  Give blood.  Volunteer.



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