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Wed Oct 15 2008

Columns

Alexander Cockburn

Yucca Mountain Comes Down to the Wire
July 10, 2002

It's a rare day that you see these guys sweat, but the nuclear industry is getting frantic. You can tell by the desperate nature of their recent campaign to push through the U.S. senate the plan to ship the nation's commercial nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, outside Las Vegas.

When Bush came to power, the nuke lobby thought they had it made. The days of competition between the oil industry and the nuclear lobby are long gone. Now, they all belong to the same conglomerate. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, perhaps the only member of the cabinet who requires a more simplified briefing book than Bush, was an old pal, long bought and sold. Bush himself called for more subsidies to nuclear power and reversed his election-eve opposition to the nuke industries most fervent aspiration: the Yucca Mountain dump.

September 11 changed all that. Not immediately, mind you. But as the patriotic hysteria, in which it was deemed un-American to question any Bush proposal, began to recede, people began to conclude that the scheme to truck 77,000 tons of radioactive waste through their communities wasn't the brightest idea. Maps of the possible transport routes show that more than 50 million Americans live within one-mile of these nuclear corridors.

Even the rosiest scenario painted by the Department of Energy admits that at least 48 people will die from cancers associated with the passage of these radioactive boxcars. Naturally, that figure doesn't take into account the toll that might result from an act of saboteur, more likely, a simple train derailment or jackknifed tractor-trailer truck that sends highly radioactive waste spilling into rivers, lakes and neighborhoods.

So, the nuclear industry had to act fast. It deployed a legion of K Street lobbyists, many with ties to both the Bush administration and big-time Democrats, and some of the nation's most craven PR firms to clear the way.

The latest recruit to the nuke team is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has beamed a wave of wildly misleading radio ads across the country aimed at securing senate passage of the Yucca Mountain bill. A vote is expected in the next week or two.

The Chamber's ads are little more than focus-group tested scare tactics. The ads claim that the Yucca Mountain plan, which enviros have shrewdly dubbed "Mobile Chernobyl," is actually a "way to get nuclear waste out of your communities." This is in reference to the nuclear waste now being stored at commercial reactors. Of course, the waste will continue to pile up at those sites as long as the plants operate and for years after they are mothballed. In fact, all nuclear waste must "cool" for at least five years before they can even consider shipping off somewhere.

Under the Yucca Mountain bailout plan, the lethal waste will go transcontinental, rolling through 44 states, plus the District of Columbia, passing through communities now far removed from nuclear plants and through states that have decided to reject nuclear power.

The ads also try to calm the public nerves by suggesting that once entombed in the bowels of Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste will be safely contained for all time or at least 10,000 years. Of course, the Chamber delicately sidesteps the question as to whether or not Yucca Mountain isn't in fact a kind of geological sieve. The disposal site sits on top of an aquifer that is becoming more and more important as a source of drinking water for the ever-expanding Las Vegas metro area. Even the DOE's own geological investigations reveal that the earthquake-prone nature of the Yucca Mountain site may create fissures in the earth that will allow the waste to seep into the underground reservoir.

There are signs that the public is beginning to awaken from the near catatonic state it has slumbered in since the 9/11 attacks. The collapse of the stock market, the insider trading scandals, the looting of 401K's, mounting layoffs, the gruesome failures of the Bush war machine, Ashcroft's assault on the Constitution, the lack of an evenhanded plan for Middle East peace ... the list of troubles grows daily. With the Yucca Mountain vote approaching any day, there's a chance to strike back and begin to set things right. All it would take to defeat the nuclear lobby and give the Bush administration a deserved black eye is for a handful of senators to launch and sustain a filibuster.

In the past, Democrats have rushed to the nuclear industry's rescue. An April 28 survey by the Las Vegas Review showed that 11 Democratic senators supported the project, including such luminaries as John Edwards, Patty Murray and Ernest Hollings. Others said were undecided, including Paul Wellstone. Now's the time to see if the likes of Wellstone, the self-professed saviour of progressive causes, really have the courage and the skill to monkeywrench the system.

Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the muckrakingnewsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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