Yucca Mountain Mudslide: Both Sides Dissemble on Nuclear Waste Dumpin Nevada

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Here's an interesting deconstruction of the election year Yucca Mountain 

accusations. The site www.factcheck.org is a good resource for learning 

what was really said by whom and in what context. It helps sort out the 

spin from the reality. Neither party ends up looking untainted.



Susan Gawarecki



Yucca Mountain Mudslide: Both Sides Dissemble on Nuclear Waste Dump in 

Nevada



Moveon.org Voter Fund falsely attacks Bush, who comes back with a 

misleading ad about Kerry.



08.25.2004



Summary



An Aug 19 ad in Nevada from the liberal Democratic group Moveon.org 

Voter Fund attacks Bush for breaking a promise he never made, falsely 

claiming Bush vowed to veto legislation making Yucca Mountain a nuclear 

dump. Actually, all Bush promised was to veto temporary storage of 

nuclear waste in the state, pending final safety studies for permanent 

storage which he later approved.



Bush-Cheney '04 in turn attacked Kerry Aug. 23 with a misleading ad 

claiming the senator long supported a Yucca Mountain disposal site 

before promising recently do all he can to block it if elected. In fact, 

Kerry voted against singling out Yucca Mountain as a storage site as 

early as 1987.





Analysis



The Yucca Mountain issue might have changed history. Four years ago 

neither Bush nor Gore promised to block the Yucca Mountain site -- 100 

miles outside Las Vegas -- as a permanent repository for used nuclear 

fuel rods, which are intensely radioactive.



Gore now has reason regret not catering more strongly to Nevada voters' 

dislike for the nuclear dump. He lost Nevada by 46 percent to Bush's 50 

percent. Had just under 11,000 of those Bush votes gone to Gore instead, 

the Democrat would have won the state's four electoral votes -- and the 

presidency -- even without Florida.



This time John Kerry is promising what Gore didn't -- to keep nuclear 

waste out. It's a clear difference between the candidates: Bush signed 

legislation July 23, 2002, clearing the way for the Department of Energy 

to go forward with the Yucca project despite objection from the state's 

governor, after earlier urging Congress to clear the way.



Bush's Non-promise



The ad says those actions by Bush broke a promise to "veto legislation 

making Yucca Mountain a nuclear dump," but that's false. Bush never made 

such a promise. What he said during the 2000 campaign, in a letter to 

Nevada's Gov. Kenny Guinn, is this:



Bush (letter to Gov. Guinn, September, 2000): The Department of Energy 

(DoE) has not completed its impact study of Yucca Mountain and important 

questions of environmental protection and safety have not yet been 

answered. Therefore, I would veto legislation that would provide for the 

temporary storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. (emphasis added).



That of course is not a promise to veto legislation making Yucca 

Mountain a permanent dump, and that was clear at the time. As the Las 

Vegas Review-Journal reported :



Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sept. 30, 2000): On the question of permanent 

storage, the two presidential candidates have both said science should 

determine if the permanent repository is suitable. Neither has suggested 

they would block the permanent site if scientists say it is safe.



And that's what Bush reiterated in the letter which the ad 

mischaracterizes. The ad show the words, “Dear Kenny, I would veto 

legislation…” scrawled across the screen, but the ad leaves out Bush's 

crucial qualifier:



Bush (letter to Gov. Guinn, September, 2000): As I've said before, I 

believe the best science must prevail in the designation that would send 

nuclear waste to any proposed site -- either on a permanent or temporary 

basis -- unless it has been deemed scientifically safe.



The Review-Journal report noted that language, and said "That appears to 

suggest that if the environmental and safety questions were addressed to 

his satisfaction, Bush would approve such a bill" for permanent storage, 

which is exactly what Bush did two years later.



Of course, what constitutes “scientifically safe” is a matter of hotly 

debated opinion. Many Nevada residents maintain that the site isn't 

safe, and the matter is currently tied up in a court dispute over 

whether sufficiently strict standards are being applied. Still, Bush 

made clear he considered the safety issue settled when he approved the 

site July 23, 2002. At that time White House press secretary Ari 

Fleischer said:



Fleischer (July 23, 2002): The successful completion of the Yucca 

Mountain project will ensure our nation has a safe and secure 

underground facility that will store nuclear waste in a manner that 

protects our environment and our citizens.



The measure Bush signed that day was a joint resolution passed 

overwhelmingly by the House (H.J. Res. 87) and Senate (S.J. Res. 34). 

The House passed the resolution with a bipartisan margin of 306-117. The 

Senate passed the resolution by a voice vote, after a key procedural 

measure was approved 60-39.



Radioactive Waste Coming?



The ad says radioactive waste "is coming to Yucca Mountain" and shows 

trucks rolling, but the fact is that it would be years before any 

radioactive waste in actually transported, even if all legal hurdles are 

cleared.



The bill Bush signed in 2002 gave the green light for the Department of 

Energy (DoE) to apply for a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission (NRC) to start construction of permanent facilities at Yucca 

Mountain. Now, two years later, the DoE says it will apply by December. 

By law, the NRC must approve or disapprove the application in no more 

than 4 years, and Sue Gagner, an NRC spokesperson, said it would take at 

least 3.



Once the DoE completes construction, however, the agency would still 

need to obtain an additional operating license before transport of the 

waste could begin. The site recommendation sent by DoE Secretary Spencer 

Abraham to Bush in 2002 set the total timeline at a minimum of 8 years 

before Yucca Mountain becomes operational.



A Kerry Flip-Flop?



The Bush campaign responded with an ad giving the false impression that 

Kerry was a long-time, strong supporter of Yucca Mountain before turning 

against it. In fact, though Kerry's record is indeed somewhat mixed, he 

cast a clear vote against singling out Yucca Mountain as early as 1987 

and the Bush ad cites his votes selectively and in a misleading way.



The ad claims Kerry "voted to establish the nuclear repository at Yucca 

Mountain," a reference to huge 1987 budget bill that included a 

provision singling out Yucca Mountain as the only site to get further 

study as a nuclear waste facility. At the time, sites in Texas and 

Washington state were under study as well. The legislation has come to 

be known as the "screw Nevada" bill. Kerry did vote for the budget 

measure, and Nevada's senators opposed it because of that one provision. 

The budget measure was adopted 61-28 on Dec. 21, 1987. However, it was 

not a straight up-or-down vote on Yucca Mountain. The key vote came more 

than a month earlier, on Nov. 18.



The "screw Nevada" provision was then part of an energy appropriations 

bill, and Kerry voted to remove it. That was the key vote on Yucca 

Mountain, and Kerry joined Nevada's two senators in voting "aye." The 

measure was defeated 34-61. As The Associated Press reported at the 

time, "That was the last of several attempts, including a short-lived 

filibuster, to scuttle the plan" to make Yucca Mountain the only site 

under study.



The Bush ad also says Kerry has "voted 7 times to make it easier to dump 

waste at Yucca," and the campaign cites seven votes in which Kerry voted 

one way while Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid, a die-hard Yucca opponent, voted 

the other. It is true that Kerry has sometimes voted for measures that 

included provisions for a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain, including the 

1987 budget bill. But The Associated Press has reported, "Each time 

Kerry has faced the simple choice of voting whether or not to send waste 

to Yucca Mountain, he has voted against it."



That was true in 2002, when Kerry voted against the Senate version of 

the Yucca Mountain measure that Bush signed. And it was true two years 

earlier, when Kerry voted in May 2000 against override of President 

Clinton's veto of a bill that would have provided for temporary storage 

of spent nuclear fuel rods in Nevada. The veto was sustained.



At one point the Bush ad quotes from a letter that Kerry sent in 1996 

stating that a nuclear dump could be "made functional by 2015." Not 

mentioned in the ad is that the letter urged the Clinton administration 

to follow congressional directives to provide more money for testing the 

Yucca facility. The ad also says Kerry "tried to speed shipment of 

nuclear waste from Massachusetts to Yucca," which refers to a 1999 

letter signed by the four senators from Massachusetts and Connecticut 

urging "an accelerated waste acceptance schedule" for waste from 

de-commissioned nuclear plants such as those in their two states. "This 

provision would give high priority to spent fuel currently stored at 

commercial reactor sites undergoing decommissioning," the letter said. 

However, both of those letters were sent at a time when Congress had 

already fixed on Yucca Mountain as the only site being considered for 

nuclear waste storage, despite Kerry's objection.



Please visit http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docid=242 to view 

this FactCheck article in full.



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