Thursday, July 07, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Yucca backers rallying

Visit to Nye County planned for July 29

WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a national lobbying group that formed this spring to promote Yucca Mountain plan to visit Nye County this month to begin building ties in Nevada, an organizer said.

A meeting tentatively set for July 29 in Pahrump illustrates a growing relationship between rural Nevadans and interests that support the proposed nuclear waste repository.

The Yucca Mountain Task Force was formed in April to revive political support in Congress and in various states for the Energy Department effort, which has been hit by delays. The task force consists of state utility regulators and nuclear industry executives, including the Nuclear Energy Institute trade association.

Five task force members plan to meet with Nye County officials, according to organizer David Blee. He is executive director of the U.S. Transport Council, an organization of nuclear waste shipping firms and equipment manufacturers that plan to seek Yucca contracts.

The visitors are scheduled to tour Yucca Mountain the next day, possibly to be joined by local government representatives, according to Blee and a Nye County spokesman.

Blee said the purpose "is to open up a dialogue between the task force and county leaders who have expressed support for the project, in terms of a coalition." Officials from neighboring Lincoln and Esmerelda counties also might be invited, he said.

Nye County leaders welcomed the effort, according to Dave Swanson, interim director of Nye County's nuclear waste repository office. Two county commissioners, Candice Trummell and Gary Hollis, probably will take part in the session, Swanson said.

"The folks (Blee) would be bringing out here, it sounds like we could learn something from them," Swanson said. "The more we can learn about issues associated with the repository, pro or con, the better we will be in our decision-making process."

State and Clark County leaders have adopted a hard-line stance on Yucca Mountain, maintaining that a nuclear waste repository would be flawed and unsafe. They argue that there is a good chance the project can be killed in the courts or by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

While there is some Yucca Mountain opposition in rural Nevada, there also are some county leaders who say that a nuclear waste site might become a reality whether they like it or not, and that they need to prepare for the possibility by recruiting jobs and other economic benefits associated with the project.

"The attitude among folks is that the repository is probably inevitable, and it seems that way," Sanders said from Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located. "The Department of Energy is anxious to work with the county and making it a success, and I truly believe that."

Bob Loux, coordinator of the state's official opposition to Yucca Mountain, said local county officials "can talk to who they want," but the visitors are selling a bad idea.

"They are trying to get the local governments pumped up on this thing," said Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "They are trying to show the project is not dead, that it really is moving."

Despite Yucca Mountain support from some rural leaders, "there still is a good deal of opposition" in those counties, Loux said.

NEI already has a consultant in Nevada, former governor Robert List. Additionally, Blee and other nuclear waste transportation executives took part in a June 9 workshop in Pahrump before the Central Nevada Community Protection Working Group, a forum for rural leaders to work on repository issues.