The state of Nevada’s knee-jerk, one-sided anti-Yucca campaign was again being sold at a forum yesterday, but a funny thing happened on the way to market: Few were buying it.
Organized by Dr. Ty Cobb (the assemblyman’s father) and Dr. John Scire, the discussion was held at the Prospector’s Club in Harrah’s Hotel & Casino in Reno. Among those in the overflow crowd of about 60 people were some heavy hitters from the business community and Chamber of Commerce, Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, representatives from Congressman Dean Heller’s office and Sen. John Ensign’s office, and a few members of the media.
Headlined “Re-Appraising Yucca: Is It Time for Neutral Assessment of the Proposed Repository?” the discussion included the usual adamant opposition by Bob Loux, the government’s taxpayer-funded propagandist, who threw out enough red herrings at the forum to feed a third world country.
Only this time, there were folks in the audience who challenged Loux’s assertions and “facts.”
For example, Dr. Cobb and Dr. Scire “argued that a new appraisal (of Yucca) would find that waste can be safely transported by armed guards to the Nevada site,” reports Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Ed Vogel this morning. “Waste stored in Yucca Mountain would be far more secure from terrorists than continuing to store it at 73 nuclear power plants around the country, they concluded.”
Loux was also corrected for claiming that there were no financial benefits available to Nevada when in fact, millions of dollars worth of financial benefits have ALREADY been funneled into the state, thanks to the Yucca Mountain Project. And the spigot is still open despite Harry Reid’s best effort to shut it off.
Loux also incorrectly asserted that if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are elected in November, they’d “kill” Yucca Mountain.
Apparently Mr. Loux missed a day or two in American civics class. The fact is, Congress passed the nuclear storage bill, and Congress can trump any president with a 2/3 vote. It’s right there in the Constitution. And considering the fact that there are 49 states vs. Nevada, when it comes to where the nuclear waste repository will be located there’s every possibility that Congress will keep Yucca on the table no matter who is elected president.
Loux also launched into his patented “the Department of Energy is incompetent” routine, while claiming the technology at Yucca Mountain is “deficient.”
I couldn’t help but wonder whether Mr. Loux had a degree in engineering and nuclear physics which allowed him the kind of background and expertise to reach such conclusions. Get this. As it turns out, he has an “Education” degree and majored in “History.” Hmmmm. And that makes him an expert on nuclear waste storage, how?
It doesn’t. In fact, Mr. Loux has NO expertise, training, experience or education whatsoever to make him an authority on whether or not the Yucca Mountain project is “deficient.”
Hey, here’s an idea. Once this Yucca thing is resolved, let’s put Mr. Loux in charge of the space program! Or maybe even the Mayo Clinic. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
The fact is, Bob Loux is a highly paid government employee whose job is to oppose Yucca Mountain…period. This is what he does for a living. His opinions are bought and paid for. He’s not objective. He doesn’t give straight, unbiased information. Bob Loux a public relations flack. A government propagandist. And clearly his Chicken Little routine is starting to wear thin with a lot of Nevadans, as evidenced by the admittedly unscientific vote taken at the conclusion of yesterday’s forum.
By a show of hands, Dr. Cobb asked how many people agreed with Bob Loux and thought Nevada should continue blindly opposing Yucca Mountain. Five people.
He then asked how many people thought Yucca was inevitable and therefore Nevada should drop its opposition and begin negotiating for benefits. Seven people.
Finally, Dr. Cobb asked how many people thought Nevada should take a more neutral position on Yucca Mountain and begin weighing both sides of the issue. The rest of the room. Including yours truly.
There are two sides to every story. For the last two decades, Nevadans have pretty much only heard Bob Loux’s side. If yesterday’s forum is any indicator, we may soon get to know…the rest…of the story.
Posted on February 27th, 2008 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
You note Loux has a degree in history, maybe he can tell us which it is. Is the earth warming or cooling? Today AlBore and his idiot (I should not insult idiots) followers say it is warming. Thirty years ago they said it was cooling.
Howard,
Cheyenne, WY
Chuck,
How do you or anyone else keep alive the delusion that the Fed. or Nuke industry is ever going to “grant” Nevada any sort of “financial benefits” beyond construction and maintenance cost?
The Nevada legislature FAILED to pass the Nevada Public Lands Act, which would have asserted Nevada’s control of our public lands.
Without that act to force the Fed. to relinquish control of Nevada’s lands, and to admit that the Fed. claim to “own” 98%+ of Nevada is false, the Fed will have no reason to pay us a cent for the use of “Their” federal land!
It’s a shame that Nevada’s territorial legislature was so short sighted and signed off on the unconstitutional “deal” for early statehood.
That “deal” gave away Nevada’s public lands in direct violation of the Equal Footing clause of our constitution.
So even if Yucca could be proven safe for the next several thousand years, even if it would not have to become an endlessly expanding facility to handle all the “waste” needing storage, any hope of an Alaska pipeline type payment to Nevada is fantasy!
I support nuclear power, but I do not support the Yucca boondoggle.
It’s time we rescinded the obsolete treaty that forbids us from simply reprocessing the nuke waste as other countries do, cease wasting time and money on Yucca, and begin building more nuclear power plants.
In the real world nuclear is the clear choice for “energy independence”, it does not require an entirely new infrastructure to be implemented as most of the “alternative energy” pipe dreams do.
Chuck,
I’m surprised that you are so in favor of Yucca. You spend most of your time railing against any and all government programs, and interferance with free enterprize, and yet you support what promisses to be a perpetually expanding program to transfer private enterprize costs to the taxpayer.
If nuclear power is so clean and cheap, those responsible for generating the hazardous waste should be responsible for all costs related to it’s safe disposal. If that becomes an insurmoutable problem, isn’t that the market speaking?
Oh, no, no, no. Read what I’ve written. I’ve never said I was in favor of Yucca. I’ve only said we should have an open discussion of the matter, not just knee-jerk opposition. Don’t put words in my mouth.
Richard notes that it would be better to reprocess the spent fuel from nuclear power plants. This is correct. But there will still be some residual products that will require long-term isolation in a repository like Yucca Mountain. The problem is not with Yucca Mountain, which is needed, but rather with our policy for how we would use Yucca Mountain and what kind and how much material we would ship there. Furthermore, the U.S. has now been successfully operating a repository for defense transuranics wastes that generate very low levels of heat successfully for a decade at WIPP in New Mexico. It would make sense to send civil nuclear wastes, that do not generate much heat, to WIPP as well. Again, the problem is not with the technology we have developed to safely dispose material very deep underground, but instead with our policy for how to use these technologies.