BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History Advertisement

Word out of Washington, D.C., this week is that Yucca Mountain is dead.

Can a majority of our leaders really be that foolish? Maybe. Very little surprises me any more when it comes to America's misbegotten energy policies.

I thought it might be interesting to look at the price Nevada, primarily Nye County, has paid for our state's boneheaded policy on Yucca Mountain.

Yucca Mountain, of course, is the site in Nye County where the federal government wants to entomb more than 70,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.

The U.S. Department of Energy held its first public meeting addressing Yucca Mountain 26 years ago this month in Las Vegas. Since then the federal government has collected more than $32 billion from a special tax levied on users of nuclear power to establish a permanent storage facility of spent fuel. More than $10 billion of that total has been spent attempting to find a storage site, most of it on Yucca Mountain.

Largely because of Nevadans' opposition, the spent fuel storage effort is decades behind schedule; we are no closer to deciding what to do with spent nuclear fuel then we were in the 1980s.

Because of our failure to solve the spent fuel problem, nuclear power -- the premier source of safe, clean, reliable, relatively cheap electric power, available in huge quantities 24/7 at a time when global warming is breathing down our necks -- has been on hiatus in America for more than 20 years. While the United States was once the world's unquestioned leader in nuclear power technology, our position in this vital area has slipped. Now countries around the world look to France, Japan, Russia, even Switzerland for expertise.

How did this happen? How did Yucca Mountain get waylaid? What can the Yucca Mountain experience tell us about America's technological future?

I have followed the Yucca Mountain program since its beginning in the spring of 1983. Here, in a nutshell, is what I believe happened.

From the outset, a few of Nevada's political leaders, most of them Democrats, notably Gov. Richard Bryan and Sen. Harry Reid, used exaggeration and misinformation to play on Nevadans' fear of radiation. Why did they do it? Former Nevada Sen. Chic Hecht told me he believed it was done cynically, for political gain.

This drumbeat of fearmongering and misinformation was based on ignorance and lack of understanding of the science and technology behind nuclear energy. And to make matters worse, the misinformation was never seriously challenged.

Consequently, over a few years beginning in 1983, a hard opposition against Yucca Mountain evolved among many of Nevada's leaders as well as a sizeable contingent of Nevadans.

Cost of

ignorance

Benjamin Franklin once said, "Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of the former, we can easily bear the latter." Change Franklin's words "idleness and pride" to "misinformation and slow-wittedness," and you have it. There is a price to be paid for what we can't get right or don't know. It's like a hidden tax.

On the positive side, Nye County has received a variety of federal funds over the years associated with the Yucca Mountain effort and this money has been beneficial. But Nye County, along with the state and nation and even the earth itself, has borne huge, unjustifiable costs because of Nevada's opposition to the project. Listed below are some of the costs of the state's opposition:

* The original Yucca Mountain legislation included a provision by which Nevada could negotiate with the federal government for benefits as compensation for accepting the repository. Nevada totally ignored this provision.

* If Yucca Mountain had been built, its construction would have generated thousands of high-paying jobs in Southern Nevada and hundreds of permanent positions once the facility was in operation.

* Nye County could have collected large sums for property taxes on Yucca Mountain and its associated support industries into the indefinite future. So large was the Yucca Mountain project, one could have purchased the entire Las Vegas Strip and more for its planned cost.

* At one point Nevada was informally offered the superconducting supercollider, the world's largest particle accellerator, that the United States wanted to build 20 years ago, valued at between $4 and $10 billion, for accepting Yucca Mountain.

Construction of the supercollider would have catapulted Nevada universities almost overnight into a world-class position in physics. Instead, its construction was begun in Texas and canceled before completion for political reasons in 1993 after $2 billion had been spent on it. Because of the failure to build the supercollider, the United States is losing its edge in high-energy physics to France and other European countries.

* Nevada was also offered a high-speed super train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas as part of the supercollider offer. Its value would have been at least $5 billion, probably closer to $10 billion. Think what that would have done to bring in the tourists and alleviate area transportation woes. The train could have seeded America with advanced train technology; instead, that is the domain of Europe and Asia. Go overseas if you want to ride a fast train.

* At one point, Nevada was offered a multi-billion-dollar nuclear medicine and energy research facility to be connected with UNLV and housed on the Nevada Test Site for accepting the repository. That, like the other offers, was dead on arrival. How many cancer patients would be alive today if the offer had been accepted?

* A $2 billion uranium enrichment facility is now being constructed in Idaho. Nevada wasn't even on the list for consideration for that project. Nevada's opposition to Yucca Mountain has understandably precluded its pursuing an unknown, but likely large, number of both government and private nuclear and other advanced technology-related projects over the years.

* Construction of Yucca Mountain would have triggered a wave of collateral entrepreneurial activity in Nye County and the rest of Southern Nevada. Remember Amargosa Valley resident and true pioneer Hank Records? He had big plans to produce Portland cement in Nye County for Yucca Mountain. Hank is gone now, but would he ever be disgusted today.

* Acceptance of Yucca Mountain by Nevada likely would have unleashed a wave of investment and research in nuclear power nationally. In 1975 in his State of the Union address to Congress, President Gerald Ford called for construction of 200 nuclear power plants to help free America from dependence on foreign energy. (That many plants would generate about 40 percent of our present electric power production instead of the 20 percent we now get from nuclear power.)

Such a boom in nuclear power would have resulted in research leading to new technology for dealing with spent fuel. It is likely that leading-edge facilities for reprocessing, transmuting and reburning spent fuel would have been constructed on the Nevada Test Site. This technology would greatly reduce the volume and longevity of radioactive materials in storage at Yucca Mountain. (Spent fuel is currently stored at reactor sites in 39 states.)

* We likely would have seen the construction of conventional nuclear power plants at several sites in Nevada, including more than one in Nye County. Nye County and Nevada would now be a major exporter of nuclear power 24/7, 365 days a year.

Solar, wind and geothermal energy production, which I support 100 percent, could have supplemented the nuclear power and underwritten the cost of power line construction. But remember, solar and wind energy are not 24/7 sources of power and won't be for the foreseeable future. You can't presently power a major industrial society on solar, wind and geothermal energy, I don't care how smart the grid is.

* Nuclear power generation creates large numbers of high-quality, well-paid jobs. A 1,000-megawatt reactor, for example, directly employs around 800 people and pays about $15 million per year in local property taxes.

In addition to being eyesores, solar and wind farms create far fewer jobs. Duke Energy wants to construct a wind farm with 161 wind turbines on 24,000 acres east of Searchlight. The towers will be 262 feet high, with blades reaching 415 feet in the air. Total output of the facility would be 270 megawatts when the wind is blowing strongly.

It will employ only 15 to 20 people when it is operational. A good truck stop produces more jobs than that.

* With predictions for an increasingly dry Southwest, water is going to become the dominant political and economic issue in the years ahead. More and more water will be pumped greater distances. There will be a big move toward desalination of sea water. Desalinated sea water may one day help sustain cities in southern Nevada, including Pahrump, which will have a population of more than 100,000.

Desalination and pumping take large amounts of energy and nuclear power is ideally suited for the job. Shouldn't that power be produced in Nevada, preferably in Nye, Esmeralda and Lincoln counties?

* Think of all the coal-fired power plants that would not have been built and all the global-warming CO2 not dumped into the atmosphere had Yucca Mountain and nuclear power technology moved forward in the past two decades.

Think of all the coal-related health problems that would have been avoided. Seventy thousand American children a year, for example, suffer neurological damage caused by the mercury discharged from coal-burning power plants.

* Nye County could have been a world-class site for development and dissemination of science and technology information on nuclear power and other clean energy sources.

Falling behind

It is becoming increasingly clear that America is not keeping up in the world marketplace in technology and innovation. Yucca Mountain is a textbook example.

For those readers who enjoy mathematics, I suggest what has happened at Yucca Mountain is a fractal of what is occurring at different scales throughout the country. Yucca Mountain is a small example of a much larger problem.

A study completed in 2005 by the National Academies, the most prestigious research body in the country, concluded, "In a world where advanced knowledge is widespread and low-cost labor is readily available, U.S. advantages in the marketplace and in science and technology have begun to erode." The study found that in 2001, U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation than on research and development.

The retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation is quoted in a press release regarding the report: "The building blocks of our economic leadership are wearing away. The challenge that America faces is immense."

More recently, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank, studied 16 factors underlying the 36 most advanced countries' and four regions' global economic competitiveness.

After looking closely at such things as human resources, innovation capacity, economic policy, performance and entrepreneurship, they concluded in a report released just last month the United States "has made the least progress of the 40 nations/regions in improvement in international competitiveness and innovation capacity over the last decade."

While the United States still enjoys a high overall ranking in comparison to many other countries, its relative position is falling. East Asian nations have made rapid progress, with China making the most gains of all.

One thing that holds countries back, the report states, is that too often "powerful interest groups ... fight against change and innovation, often under the guise of the public interest, but all too often, the result is that progressive and positive innovation is slowed."

There is something fundamentally wrong with a social system that lets a few misinformed, well-connected individuals hamstring a huge, essential technology at this critical point in human history -- think global warming and an exploding world population. Even if Yucca Mountain were given the green light today, we could never get back the 20-plus years we have lost.

We can't ask history to give us back the money and opportunities we turned our backs on more than two decades ago. That's all gone. We can never give that money and opportunity to our children when they could have used it.

The only question is whether the ignorance will continue, as so many of Nevada's leaders seem to insist.

Library notices

* The Pahrump Community Library is accepting applications for volunteer security positions. Volunteers are asked to give 5-10 hours per week. Pick up an application at the main circulation desk in the library.

* Pahrump Community Library will host a preventive health event for local residents offered by Life Line Screening at the library on April 28.

Life Line Screening is the nation's leading provider of community-based preventive screenings and scans for potential health problems related to blocked arteries, abdominal aortic aneurysms, hardening of the arteries in the legs, and atrial fibrillation (irregular heart heat). All five affordable, non-invasive, painless vascular screenings take 60-90 minutes to complete. Register for a Stroke, Vascular Disease, Osteoporosis, and Heart Rhythm Package for $149. You must pre-register for the screenings. Appointments are limited. Call 888-653-6441, or visit the Web site www.lifelinescreening.com.