BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History Advertisement

The first part of Bob's column was published on page A8 in the June 13 edition.

The federal government's effort to store 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain began with the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1983. Since then, the effort has had a rough and expensive ride.

In the first part of this brief history of Yucca Mountain, we looked at the first years of the project. In Part 2, we trace some of the politics that have driven the project, suggest reasons why the effort has not succeeded up to now, and discuss the price we have paid for our failures.

Yucca stalls

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) workman-like approach in dealing with Nevadans on Yucca Mountain is, I believe, a symptom of the agency's and the nuclear industry's misunderstanding of the spent nuclear fuel storage issue.

Prior to 1983, DOE officials had been advised by Battelle, one of their large contractors, that successful construction of a repository for spent nuclear fuel was much more a social-political problem than a technical challenge.

The engineers and scientists, a Battelle report stated, could handle quite well the safe transportation and permanent storage of the spent nuclear fuel. However, if social and political aspects of the storage of spent nuclear fuel were not dealt with effectively, Battelle suggested, the effort could become controversial and divisive.

The issue was ripe for political manipulation.

For several years following DOE's first public meeting on Yucca Mountain, held in Las Vegas in early 1983, I believe opinion in Nevada regarding the repository was rather soft; most people didn't take a firm position one way or the other. I believe this was still somewhat true even after 1987, when Yucca Mountain was singled out as the sole candidate for a spent fuel repository.

People wanted more information; they needed to be persuaded.

In my travels in Las Vegas and in Nye, Esmeralda, Eureka and Lincoln counties, most people with whom I spoke were not worked up about the issue. When people did have opinions, they were likely to be weakly held.

Perhaps uppermost in most people's minds was, "What's in it for us?"

In the rural areas it was, "Hey, we need jobs out here."

Most of Nevada's congressional delegation had open minds on Yucca Mountain for several years after 1983. Nevada Sen. Chic Hecht, a Republican who took office in January 1983 and described himself to me as President Ronald Reagan's man in the Senate, was strongly pro-repository and very much a champion of Nye County's interests.

Judging from accounts in the press, Republican Sen. Paul Laxalt, also a strong Reagan supporter who served between 1975 and 1987, was also pro-Yucca Mountain.

Representative Barbara Vucanovic, a Republican from Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, appeared open-minded about the repository. Harry Reid was the only member of Nevada's congressional delegation who strongly opposed the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in those first years.

The Las Vegas Sun and its editor, Hank Greenspun, were adamantly opposed, as they had been to the Nevada Test Site throughout its history. The Las Vegas Review Journal for years was equivocal on Yucca Mountain, I would say neither strongly in favor nor opposed.

The big Las Vegas casinos for years were also equivocal.

In the meantime, anti-Yucca Mountain, anti-nuclear opinion among many in Nevada was slowly taking root, especially in the urban areas.

Perhaps a significant amount of this negative opinion may have come from the many newcomers to the state in this period. Chernobyl in 1987 had the effect of feeding it. Anti-Yucca Mountain sentiment was free to develop more or less unimpeded in the state, having been given a free ride by the failures of DOE and others in favor of nuclear power to educate the public and counter the negativity.

The Las Vegas Sun put out a steady stream of biased information on Yucca Mountain and nuclear energy technology. They even had a reporter, Mary Manning, whose specialty was nuclear negativity.

The negativity from Bob Loux's state office has never stopped. Both Harry Reid and Richard Bryan rode the anti-Yucca Mountain sentiment they had helped create to the Senate.

Reid moved to the Senate in 1987, replacing Laxalt. Bryan moved from Nevada governor to the Senate in 1989 by defeating Hecht.

About a year before he died, Hecht told me he attributed his defeat primarily to Bryan's milking of the Yucca Mountain issue.

In about 1986, I suggested to Loux that Bryan was on the wrong side of the Yucca Mountain issue.

"Are you kidding?" he replied. "It's the best issue he's got."

Instead of two pro-Yucca Mountain senators, by 1989 Nevada had two senators who strongly opposed it. The die was nearly cast.

I asked Hecht how Bryan and Reid knew early on Yucca Mountain was going to be such a good issue for them. He replied, "Fear always makes a powerful issue for a politician."

Bryan retired after two terms in the Senate; Reid built his political career around his opposition to Yucca Mountain and has been highly effective in playing the role of obstructionist.

From the late 1980s on, most Nevada politicians from both sides of the aisle have been obliged to toe the anti-Yucca Mountain party line.

Costs we pay

I believe Nevada's opposition to Yucca Mountain has been costly in many ways.

The federal government collects a tax on all nuclear power produced in the United States. So far, $27.2 billion has been collected under that tax. As of fiscal year 2006, almost $10 billion has been spent on programs for permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel. As of September 2007, $6.9 billion had been dispersed for the Yucca Mountain effort.

Since the federal government was required by law to begin accepting spent nuclear fuel from the utilities in 1997, nuclear power producers have taken to suing the federal government for breach of contract. So far, they have been awarded more than $7 billion. That's a total of $17 billion out of the public's pocket and not much to show for it.

But these costs are probably insignificant compared to the damage done to the earth's environment because of the U.S.'s failure to close the nuclear fuel cycle.

Untold numbers of gas- and coal-burning power plants have been constructed while further development of nuclear power has been on hold. Much, if not most, of that fossil fuel-based power production -- yesterday's technology -- could have been nuclear.

How much carbon dioxide, mercury and other toxic substances, some of them radioactive -- yes, burning coal sends radioactive substances naturally present in coal up the smokestack -- have been discharged into the earth's atmosphere because of this failure?

The damage done to the earth's environment, not to mention human health, is impossible to calculate, but it is likely considerable.

And then there are missed economic and social opportunities for Nye County, Nevadans and the country.

If the cards had been played right, Yucca Mountain could have seeded the development of a large advanced energy and nuclear science technology complex perhaps unmatched in the world.

In the 1980s and 1990s, it was not obvious to most that the world was headed for serious, potentially catastrophic energy and related global warming problems. The supposed need to store nuclear "waste" safely in the ground for 10,000 years, or for 1 million years, as the state of Nevada foolishly demands, was not seen as overkill.

We didn't seem to understand that there is more recoverable energy in the 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel intended for Yucca Mountain than in all the oil and gas in Saudi Arabia.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the nuclear "waste" to which the anti-Yucca Mountain forces have been opposed, will soon become the basis of a huge new energy industry, and Nevada (particularly Nye County) could have been -- and may still have a chance to be -- at the center of things.

That spent nuclear fuel intended for Yucca Mountain is going to be reprocessed and turned into electricity by somebody somewhere -- why not us?

The Tennessee Valley Authority just received $4 million from the Department of Energy to develop a conceptual design for "a nuclear waste reprocessing plant." A friend who lives in east Tennessee told me, "That money should be going to Nevada."

The French have been smart about all of this. Today, France gets about 80 percent of its electric power from 59 nuclear reactors. The French, who enjoy as high a standard of living as we and a longer life expectancy, dump less than one-half the amount of carbon per capita into the atmosphere that we do.

France's reliance on nuclear power is the main reason.

In the 1970s, France analyzed its energy situation -- "No oil, no gas, no coal, no choice," they said. They concluded nuclear was the best option. The public was educated on the pros and cons and the people made a rational choice about the future.

With gas costing more than $120 per barrel and global warming coming at us like a freight train, it's a different world from the time when Richard Bryan and Harry Reid announced their opposition to Yucca Mountain.

The day is not far off when such an unfortunate view will get a politician in trouble. But we have paid a price.

I borrowed the title from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who used it as the heading of a piece he wrote recently critiquing presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain's silly idea to place a moratorium this summer on the federal gas tax. I believe the heading aptly describes the history of the Yucca Mountain project.