June 2008
U.S. Water News Online
LAS VEGAS — Nevada officials rallied against plans for licensing a national nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, while Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain said in Colorado the repository might not be necessary.
"I would seek to establish an international repository for spent nuclear fuel that could collect and safely store materials overseas that might otherwise be reprocessed to acquire bomb-grade materials," McCain, R-Ariz., said in a speech on international nuclear security at the University of Denver.
"It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain," McCain said. He referred to the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the Energy Department wants to store 77,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel and other highly radioactive waste.
At an anti-Yucca rally at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., dismissed McCain's remarks. Reid said McCain's voting record showed he favors the Yucca Mountain repository.
"John McCain is on the wrong side of that issue," said Reid, the Senate majority leader.
The rally against the Yucca repository drew officials including Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., former Sen. Richard Bryan, chairman of the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, other state and Clark County officials, and environmentalists.
Organizers said they intend to circulate a petition asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject an Energy Department application to build and operate the planned repository.
Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto said she was prepared to make legal challenges as soon as the Energy Department submits its application next month. Cortez Masto said she believes the document will be incomplete, and will fail to protect the public and the environment from deadly radioactive materials.
Allen Benson, a Yucca Mountain project spokesman, said the Energy Department will submit a complete application for "very thorough and rigorous review" by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"We look forward to participating in the NRC process," Benson said.
In a call with reporters, McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, said the idea of an international repository is only practical in Siberia.
"So when Senator McCain indicates a willingness to support the idea of an international repository and because the United States controls in effect the destination of some 75 or 80 percent of the spent fuel in the world ... an international repository will not happen without U.S. support and will not happen without a place to go," Scheunemann said.
Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., have said they oppose building a Yucca Mountain repository.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said he welcomed McCain's comments about steering nuclear waste debate away from Yucca Mountain and toward waste reprocessing.
"I will be talking to Senator McCain a lot about that," Ensign said in a call with reporters. "My belief is you don't need a repository, you need to recycle the waste.''
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., "welcomes any acknowledgment from the McCain camp that Yucca Mountain is a failure and should be scrapped," Berkley spokesman David Cherry said. "But that does not mean she agrees with this concept as an alternative.''