The Saudi desert?
I can understand his concern, but when it comes right down to it nuclear power is something we need, and it needs to have someplace for its waste to be stored. Right now, Las Vegas gets its power from Hoover Dam, and so nuclear is not an issue for the governor of Nevada. But if Vegas continues to swell, they too will be wanting a nuclear power plant.
Yucca Mountain seems as good a place as any. How many posts until somebody suggests ANWAR? ;-)
Guess what governor, they didn't mine the nuclear fuel from underneath the powerplants. They transported the fuel (and continue to do so) past these same 123 million people in the first place. And there's never been one problem. So now that the fuel is depleted and less radioactive, you don't want to transport the fuel back out of the populated areas into a hole in Nevada, where it can't hurt anyone.
Talk about reality-challanged-liberal. This guy saw to many radioactive giant ant movies in the '50s.
There is a toxic waste disposal facility at 55 West 125th St. in New York. Maybe we could bury more than just the last 8 years of toxic waste there.
If the Governor says no, then it should be no. Maybe it is a good site, maybe not. What about a long-term lease [100,000 years] at a decent monthly rate that will make the Governor happy?
Should be a no-brainer. 2 Senators don't want it in Nevada, and 98 want it anywhere but in thier states.
A simple majority should be a breeze.
Further.....why should the State of Nevada have to take the junk from the rest of the Nation? It seems like Nevada has done more of its share of helping the nation with things atomic, and by extension nuclear.
I suggest storing it in the Halls of Congress, the basement of the White House, and around the homes of all the stockholders and consumers of nuclear power.
BTW, i am all for nuclear power as a large ingredient in the arsenal of power sources. I am not for one state getting stuck with all the s**t!!! And certainly not from a foreign country!!! I don't buy the BS we 'have to save the environment case folks like Russia won't'...then let them eat it when it rots in THEIR environs!
So says a professional politician who owes his living to gathering a majority of the votes of his constituents, by whatever means possible as long as he doesn't get caught with his pants down (and even then, based on previous experience, he may be okay, if he has a "D" after his name).
OTOH, we have the process of scientific inquiry, which is beholden to no one other than Mother Nature, which has produced study after study indicating the site is safe and suitable for the intended purpose.
Which is more objective, more likely to honor the truth? I'll go with the science.
i'm always amazed at the incompentence of hte nuclear industry that they went ahead and made thousands of tons of waste without knowing where it was going. I guess they were getting paid all along, and now its someone else's problem.
Bump for later.
In fact, there is no safe place on this earth to put all that radioactive garbage. Worse yet, as the Governor has pointed out, there is a significant hazard involved in transporting it to any site. However, now that the problem is upon us, the transportation problem is a given, one we have no choice but to deal with. The storage problem, on the other hand, is one we don't have to deal with.
Why not put NASA to work doing something useful? Why not package the stuff up and shoot it into the sun?
Jimmy Carter got us into this mess, so I guess an alternative would be to put it on his peanut farm.
Breeder reactors are the way to go.
One serious alternative is to reprocess the "waste" and recycle it as fuel.
Nevertheless, these Nevada politicians are an national embarassment and a disgrace.
Nevada Power is teetering on bankruptcy despite unacceptable rate increases, and the dam*ed idiots are hellbent on obstructing utilization of nuclear power.
Furthermore, alternatives such as solar are not economicly feasible despited the natural advantage of Nevada being one of the sunniest states in the Union.
These posturing bozos will not get my vote based specificly on this issue.
As I understand it, at least most of the federal lands in Nevada were not "taken from" the state of Nevada. The state of Nevada never owned them. Nevada began life as a territory of the United States -- the whole territory was owned by the federal government. The United States admitted Nevada to statehood on the understanding that large lands in Nevada would continue to be federal property.
Admission of a territory to statehood means that the Federal government yields land which it already owns to be the territory of a new political community within the United States, a new state. The United States is under no obligation to admit any territory to statehood, or to give any territory any more federal land than it wishes to give. The United States admitted Nevada to the Union without yielding to the new state certain lands within its borders which were and are owned by the United States.
Article 4, Section 3 of the Constitution states: "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States..."
Yucca Mountain is property belonging to the United States. The state of Nevada has no jurisdiction over Yucca Mountain. The President has made this decision according to "rules and regulations" established by Congress. It is entirely constitutional. Nevada will simply embarrass itself if it tries to make this a states' rights issue.
(reposted from "Bush Endorses Yucca Mountain")