Although most of Nevada's political elite embraced the notion of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository when it was first proposed -- after all, federal contracts had long meant high-dollar jobs floating down like manna from heaven -- it's long since been de rigueur for establishment politicos such as U.S. Sen. Harry Reid to stand firm against this imposition on Nevada.
The waste dump is being forced on Nevada. A major complaint is that the proposed repository uses unproven technology and is therefore unsafe: Radiation from the spent nuclear fuel could eventually leak into groundwater.
Advertisement
In addition, the threat of an accident could deter tourists -- many of whom have spent all their lives less than 100 miles from an active nuclear plant where spent fuel rods are now stored in glorified swimming pools -- from coming here to gamble.
Adhering to this line has become a virtual catechism for Nevada politicians -- they stray from this talking point at their peril.
So imagine, if you will, the kind of outcry that might be heard from Sen. Reid's office if some wayward young Nevada Republican were to propose a $5 million federal "seed" grant to help establish an above-ground nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at the Nevada Test Site, as close or even closer to Las Vegas than Yucca Mountain.
Good grief. To those who worry that radioactive technology is too dangerous a genie to be allowed out of the bottle, reprocessing fuel to extract plutonium -- famously "the most toxic substance on earth" -- is to geologic burial at Yucca Mountain as "The War of the Worlds" is to Steven Spielberg's cute little "E.T." Think Kerr-McGee plutonium. Think martyred nuclear whistle-blower Karen Silkwood.
Well, guess what? A Nevada politician is now proposing that an entity run by a current and a recently retired UNLV administrator be awarded a $5 million "seed" grant from the Department of Energy to conduct site studies for a test-scale nuclear waste reprocessing facility, presumably at the Nevada Test Site.
And how has Sen. Harry Reid, head of Nevada's delegation and champion of the war against Yucca Mountain, responded?
Um, actually ... it's Minority Leader Harry Reid who's backing the proposal.
Journey back with us now seven years. At the end of 1998, David Thomassen of the Energy Department admits that if a $300,000 grant request for a fancy DNA analyzer to study bird migratory routes at UNLV had come through regular channels, "We would have sent it back and said it was not relevant to our mission."
But since the request comes from an ornithologist named Donald Baepler, who runs the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies at UNLV, and since it's backed by the powerful Sen. Reid, DOE promptly issues the bird grant under the category of "congressional earmarks."
Now, in 2006, Sen. Reid is pushing two men -- Tony Hechanova, current head of the nuclear science division of the aforementioned Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies, and Donald Baepler (there's that name again), the center's original director, now retired -- as appropriate recipients for a $5 million DOE contract to conduct site studies for a nuclear waste reprocessing factory.
This in no way contradicts the senator's firm position against storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, he explains. "We have been doing research stuff for years dealing with nuclear waste," the senator said this week. "It doesn't mean just because they do research that it is bad."
Well, of course not. If UNLV scientists can win a DOE contract to do valuable nuclear physics on the blackboard -- assuming we find this an appropriate use for federal funds in the first place -- go to it. But this contract isn't merely to do theoretical work. It's to conduct a "site study for a test-scale nuclear waste reprocessing factory." Surely the goal of any such study is to demonstrate that Nevada might be a good site for a "full-scale nuclear waste reprocessing factory."
Is it the senator's position that such a chemically active reprocessing plant would be a boon to the state, while burying the same fuel rods inside a mountain would terrify tourists for generations to come?
That seems odd.
Back in 1998, Mr. Baepler said researchers at the Harry Reid Center would not let the DOE's $300,000 gift for his bird machine influence their science. "We don't owe them anything for this," Mr. Baepler said of the Energy Department. "We're totally independent of Yucca Mountain and totally independent of the Nevada Test Site."
