The Washington Times opines that Harry Reid almost got away with wasting billions of the taxpayer money on a big hole in the ground in his home state of Nevada. With the senator from Searchlight moving swiftly toward retirement, the enormous bunker beneath Yucca Mountain will soon be the needed storage bin for American spent nuclear fuel. And not a day too soon. The radioactive waste has been accumulating for years at [semi}unsecured sites across the continent.
The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will review the science behind a permanent nuclear waste repository at a hearing Friday, and consider the consequences of further delaying the use of Yucca Mountain. It has been over 30 years since Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, yet we still have not fixed our nuclear waste problems, says Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, the chairman of the subcommittee. The unlawful closure of Yucca Mountain was a major setback, but I believe we are now headed back on the right track as the licensing process continues.
Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas in the desolate reaches of the Nevada desert, was selected in 1987 as the site of a deep geological repository that would store the U.S. radioactive waste safely for 10,000 years. With a main tunnel five miles long, Yucca Mountain was intended to begin accepting nuclear material in 1998, but Mr. Reid and his relentless not in my backyard campaign delayed using it for years.
The federal government, however, continued to require electric power companies across the country to contribute to a Nuclear Waste Fund, making them pay for something the government has not delivered. Only the federal government can get by with such thievery. The fund collected 36 billion dollars before a federal judge stopped the scam. Despite the billions spent studying, planning and digging the hole, there was no prospect of using it until now.
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