Yucca Mountain Groundhog Day

Finally, the federal government sees the error of its ways. Making Nevada the nation's nuclear waste repository in the same way Godfather Vito Corleone made that movie executive an offer he couldn't refuse is no way to win friends and influence people.

Hence, for the last quarter-century, Nevadans -- even Nevadans like me, who look favorably on nuclear power -- have been at odds with Washington not over the efficacy of Yucca Mountain Project, but the tyranny in the selection of Yucca Mountain for the nation's nuclear dump.

Whatever you might think about the intellectual honesty of me and fellow Nevadans who tolerated above-ground nuclear explosions but bridled at a nuclear waste burial site, understand this: We're angry at a jerry-built process that jammed a nuclear repository into Nevada on the first date. When we said "No," and then later screamed "Hell no!" we did it for everyone facing similar oppression.

Look, we're as patriotic as any state in the union (as the Nevada Test Site proves), but do not play the schoolyard bully and push us around, even under the alleged banner of national interest.

The feds should have known from the get-go that Nevada would not taking kindly to their Yucca jobbery when Clark County Commissioner Thalia Dondero, the sweetest of elected officials at the time, said she'd lie down on the railroad tracks before allowing trains of nuclear waste to enter Nevada.

Thalia is 91 years old now -- sweet and kindly as ever. But, believe me, I have no doubt that even today she'd still make good on that blockade.

In the intervening years, the fight over a national repository for nuclear waste has been as surreal as any, with the Empire in Washington, D.C., holding the party line on the scientific (not political) merits of choosing Yucca Mountain, and the Rebel Alliance in Nevada weaving the yarn that the moonlike landscape of the Nevada Test Site, some 100 miles from Las Vegas, made no sense.

Truth is, Yucca Mountain probably made some sense -- along with any number of other sites. It is also true that the selection process was cut short in a naked power play imposed by the politically strong on the politically weak.

Today, the giant tunnel inside the mountain sits empty, unfunded and moribund -- a testament to a lot of time and dollars wasted.

A blue ribbon panel examined the Yucca Mountain Project failure, and on the same week as Groundhog Day 2012 (how fitting) admitted that if the nation is ever going to find a permanent repository for nuclear waste, it's going to have to do so by being less of a prickly extortionist and more of an educator bearing gifts.

Use carrots, not sticks. That's how a member of the panel explains it.

Commission member and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft says wherever the new national dump site goes, the decision should be "consent-based."

"It's psychological," he says. "People don't understand nuclear waste. The problem itself is solvable."

The commission points out that other countries, such as Sweden and Finland have found safe locations for permanent nuclear waste storage with local approval. It has also worked for the country's military dump site, in New Mexico's salt caverns near Carlsbad.

Pardon Nevadans if we don't do cartwheels at the federal government's latter-day light-bulb moment.

The experience here produced a coalition of resentment that poisoned the well, ending the whole idea of anything nuclear at Yucca Mountain.

As wasteful as it may now seem and as much as I'd like to see the carrot the federal government woulda, coulda, shoulda dangled some 25 years ago, Yucca Mountain is a big, empty hole, and a big, empty hole it will likely stay.

As for the new site? I'm rooting for Washington, D.C.

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.