Nuclear Waste Dump Faces New Roadblocks

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-other/2006/nov/24/112409101.html

When Congress targeted Nevada as the nation's nuclear waste dumping ground, the state didn't have the political power to say no. Twenty years later, the most ardent foe of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump is about to become Senate majority leader. Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's new job, which gives him control over what legislation reaches the Senate floor, could deal a crippling blow to the already stumbling project.

Among Reid's first acts after this month's election was to convene a conference call with home-state reporters to declare Yucca Mountain "dead right now."

"It sure is different now than when I came (to the Senate) in 1986," the senator observed.

The dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is planned as the first national repository for radioactive waste. It's supposed to hold 77,000 tons of the material - from commercial power plants reactors and defense sites across the nation - for thousands of years. About 50,000 tons of the waste is now stored in temporary sites at 65 power plants in 31 states. Reid would leave all of it in place.

<more>