GOP senator unhappy with Yucca answers at Las Vegas debate

At the Republican presidential debate on Tuesday, major candidates said the right things to a Nevada audience about the politically unpopular Yucca Mountain project.

Framing Yucca as a states right issue, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Ron Paul said one state should not be singled out against its will for nuclear waste burial. The responses to a question from the audience drew applause at the Sands Expo and Convention Center at The Venetian.

But at least one GOP lawmaker back in Washington was not thrilled with the comments.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told reporters today he planned to speak with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whom he has endorsed, about Yucca Mountain. Inhofe is one of the leading members of Congress looking for ways to revive the project that the Obama administration has canceled.

“I am looking forward to that conversation,” Inhofe said, according to a report in The Hill. “I think you will see a more modified answer next time,” at least from Perry, he said.

Romney said the government should offer as much incentives as necessary to make nuclear waste worthwhile to any interested states, although a "nuclear waste negotiator" was authorized by Congress in 1987 to try to sell the concept to communities and Indian tribes without success. The office was disbanded in 1994.

Short of being a willing buyer, a state should have the final word on the waste, he said.

"The idea that 49 states can tell Nevada, 'We want to give you our nuclear waste' doesn’t make a lot of sense," said Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. "I think the people of Nevada ought to have the final say as to whether they want that. And my guess is that for them to say yes to something like that, someone’s going to have to offer them a pretty good deal, as opposed to having the federal government jam it down their throat.

"And by the way, if Nevada says, look, we don’t want it, then let other states make bids and say: Hey, look, we’ll take it.

"Let the free market work and, on that basis, the places that are geologically safe according to science and where the people say the deal’s a good one will decide where we put this stuff. That’s the right course for America."

Said Perry: "From time to time, Mitt and I don’t agree. But on this one, he hit it -- the nail right on the head.

"Allow the states to make the decision, and some state out there will see the economic issue, and they will have it in their state."

Texas Rep. Ron Paul said he has voted alongside Nevada lawmakers against Yucca Mountain.

"What right does 49 states have to punish one state and say, we’re going to put our garbage in your state?" Paul said. "I think that’s wrong."

"Congressman Paul is right on that," Romney said. "I don’t always agree with him, but I do on that."

Asked by moderator Anderson Cooper for his view, Newt Gingrich was more open to the site. He said he endorsed the scientific study of Yucca Mountain when he was U.S. House speaker from 1995 to 1999.

I’m not a scientist," Gingrich said. "I mean, Yucca Mountain certainly was picked by the scientific community as one of the safest places in the United States.

"When I was in Congress, frankly, I worked with the Nevada delegation to make sure that there was time for scientific studies. But we have to find some method of finding a very geologically stable place. And most geologists believe that, in fact, Yucca Mountain is that."

The other debate participants -- Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain, were not called upon and did not jump into the discussion on Yucca Mountain.