http://www.newsreview.com/reno/content?oid=1384564GOP candidates: Bring waste to Nevada
With Yucca site nearly dead, Republicans try to keep it alive
By Dennis Myers
This article was published on 03.11.10.
Pacific Northwest activist Gerry Pollet could not believe his eyes.
Pollet, who monitors the cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on the Columbia River in Washington and has sometimes made common cause with Nevada anti-Yucca Mountain dump activists, found a Las Vegas Review-Journal story on the web about Nevada candidates calling for bringing waste to Yucca Mountain just as the state seemed on the verge of winning its long running battle against the dump there.
“Several Republican candidates—including leading U.S. Senate candidates Danny Tarkanian, Sue Lowden and Sharron Angle—have expressed support for studying or experimenting with reprocessing, a method of extracting useful fuel from radioactive waste,” the newspaper reported. “Two Republican gubernatorial candidates are also open to the idea, despite steadfast opposition from the Nevada political establishment that stymied the plan to store waste at Yucca Mountain.”
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At an energy and environment conference in Phoenix on Feb. 1, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Gregory Jaczko was asked why the United States didn’t reprocess its waste like France. He called this a public policy myth.
“Nuclear power has some information that has mythology to it,” Jaczko he said. “One of the best developed myths out there is that France has solved the waste problem. France has not solved the waste problem.”
If they have, he asked, why is France—like the United States—trying to solve its waste problem by looking for a Yucca Mountain-style site? He said France reuses its fuel once, but then must find a way to dispose of it. And France generates about half the waste the U.S. generates.
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Another false myth spread by Republicans and the nuclear industry.
You just can't trust Republicans or the nuclear industry.