Sandoval: Despite what Nye says, he says no to Yucca

CARSON CITY -- Gov. Brian Sandoval played his gubernatorial trump card Monday, telling the nation's energy secretary that Nevada doesn't support resurrecting Yucca Mountain as a high-level nuclear waste dump or hosting an interim storage site in the state, no matter what officials in rural Nye County say.

"There should be no uncertainty or misunderstanding of my position," Sandoval wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "The state of Nevada does not support the location of any such site within the state and will oppose any attempt to either resurrect the defunct Yucca Mountain project or locate an interim storage facility at Yucca or elsewhere in Nevada."

Nye County commissioners sent a letter to Chu last week, expressing the county's willingness to accept spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors around the country after a commission recommended that the Department of Energy seek willing hosts to store nuclear waste.