As we approach Nevada's February 14 caucuses, we wonder what The Men Who Would Be Prez sez about our celebrated issue du campaign—designating Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuke-waste depository by 2010.
Granted, here in Nevada, we've been known to care a wee bit about other topics—say, gaming regulations, and a few trifles the rest of the nation seems fixated on, such as Iraq, taxes, foreign policy, fighting terrorism, the assault on civil liberties, the economy, employment and that ultimate threat to national security and peace on earth, steroids in sports—but if there's one polarizing issue that could sway the vote when the spotlight swivels toward us, it's this one.
Here's each of the major candidates' Sermon on the Yucca Mount (Amen):
Sen. John Kerry: The Democratic front-runner—along with back-of-the-packer Sen. Joseph Lieberman—has been the most consistent foe of the plan to unload radioactive crud at our rugged doorstep. The Massachusetts legislator and passionate environmentalist (he has one active and one inactive nuclear power plant in his state) voted against overriding Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of President Bush's decision to proceed with the Yucca plan, saying there were "too many unanswered questions." He also opposed the 1996 bill that would have established an interim nuke-storage facility at Yucca.
However, in a 1999 letter to the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Kerry was one of several Democratic senators—along with Lieberman— to urge an "accelerated waste acceptance" time frame to ferry nuke waste from closed power plants once a dump site is chosen.
Asked for an updated summary of his Yucca Mountain position by Las Vegas Weekly, the Kerry campaign did not immediately respond.
Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark: Not a problem here. Clark initially said he didn't know enough about the issue to form an opinion shortly after jumping into the race. But when contacted by the Weekly, Tony Grimes of Nevadans for Clark 2004 said Clark's current stance "is no summary. The statement is concise and unequivocal."
You judge: "I am against the nuke dump at Yucca Mountain, period. I will use the full force of the presidency to kill this dangerous project, which would put the lives and health of Nevadans at risk for generations. Unlike President Bush and other politicians, that is the only position I've ever taken and it will remain my position as president."
The "and other politicians" aside is a not-so-veiled swipe at ...
Ex Vermont Gov. Howard Dean: Gloves off now, prez-race groupies. The Screaming Meemie of Campaign '04 has a history placing him astride the nuke-waste debate, legs danging on each side of our controversial mountain.
As Vermont governor in 1996, Dean urged then-Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords of his home state to support the interim-storage bill for Yucca Mountain. "I wrote a letter to my senator saying you ought to vote for Yucca Mountain because we've got a nuclear power plant and I want to get the stuff out of my state," Dean told supporters at a Las Vegas fund-raiser last October, as reported by the Las Vegas Sun.
"Now that we're running for president, now I have seen the light. I'm not going to promise you I'm going to be against Yucca Mountain, but if I become president ... we're going to stop construction and we're going to have a complete safety review. I worry deeply about corrosive nuclear waste rotting through the casks and having stuff buried all that far underground ... I'm not going to say Yucca Mountain is out, and I'm not going to say it is in, either."
While not committing either way, Dean used Yucca against Bush, adding: "Nevada will vote Democratic this time [the state went for Bush in 2000] simply because George Bush tried to turn you into a nuclear waste dump. ... He's clearly written off Nevada."
Response was, shall we say, predictable.
"I'm going to stick with a decision whether it's popular politically or not," a Dean rival, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, remarked. "Howard Dean has gone a slightly different way."
Even more controversial was a 1993 deal between Dean and then-Gov. Ann Richards of Texas to ferry Vermont's low-level waste from its one nuclear power plant to the overwhelnmingly Hispanic, west Texas town of Sierra Blanca, near El Paso, tarring Dean with the term "environmental racist." The Lone Star State's legislature had pegged the town as the preferred site, and Dean defended the agreement, claiming Vermont was responding to a federal requirement to dispose of the material and his state had no voice in the selection of the site. (A Texas environmental agency blocked the dump's construction in 1998 after discovering a geologic fault under the proposed site.)
Still, Dean's critics claim he did nothing to urge Texas to reconsider the choice of Sierra Blanca, despite strident protests from environmental and Hispanic activists and congressional Democrats.
"They should not ship nuclear waste to a Latino community where they don't have the clout," Kerry told the Des Moines Register last October. "Howard Dean knew that was the site, and he never stood up and said, 'Don't go there.'" Speaking to the AP, Kerry added that Dean displayed "an insensitivity to that community."
Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, co-chair of Dean's campaign in Nevada, did not respond to a request for further comment.
Sen. John Edwards: The only major candidate to come down squarely for building the Yucca dump, Edwards voted for the project despite pleas from 21 environmental and social-justice group leaders in his home state of North Carolina—who posed questions about waste transportation to a life-size Edwards cutout outside his office in Raleigh. And further rumblings about his relationship with the nuclear-power industry are ominous.
However, Edwards is under pressure from his state's nuke-industry power brokers. North Carolina has five active nuclear reactors that produce about 32 percent of the state's electricity. The North Carolina Independent Media Center claims that in 2000, Edwards reversed his stance from opposition to support of the Yucca project after getting a letter from William Orser, an executive with CP&L (Carolina Power and Light).
Sen. Joseph Lieberman: The Connecticut lawmaker and ex-VP candidate stood with Kerry against overriding Guinn's veto and against the 1996 interim-storage bill, and has reiterated his stance against building the Yucca repository in trips to the Valley. "In 2000, George Bush said that sound science, not politics, should carry the day at Yucca Mountain," Lieberman said last November, as quoted by the AP. "Now that's one more addition to his pile of broken promises—a pile so tall you could call it a mountain.
"I have consistently voted against the Yucca Mountain plan because it didn't protect public health and created an unrealistic deadline for moving and storing the waste—a deadline that the energy department has already said it cannot meet," Lieberman continued. "It would be easy to pretend that shipping waste to Nevada would put it out of sight and mind. But it wouldn't have been right, and wouldn't have solved the problem. We need a president who will make clear choices and stick with them, whether he's in a campaign or in the Oval Office."
Contacted by the Weekly for an updated comment, Adam Kovacevich, deputy press secretary of the Lieberman campaign, referred us to the senator's previous statements.
President George Dubya Bush: Need you ask?