OK, this one really hacks me.
For those of you who don't know, the main 527 aimed at Nevada revolves around the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository, a congressional boondoggle that has received or been promised over $1 trillion in federal funding over a number of years. Yucca Mountain is, in short, a very bad idea, as it will involve the transportation of nuclear waste cross country to the Nevada site, which is close to the test range. This is intended to be achieved over unsecured rail lines, meaning that the environmental impact of Yucca Mountain could be realized long before the nuclear waste reaches the site. Many of the rail lines that will transport the waste travel through well populated areas where a simple derailment could cause mass fatalities. One example of this is Oshkosh, Wisconsin, which is situated on the proposed rail path from Two Rivers, Wisconsin. In the city of Oshkosh, over 10,000 of the city's residents live in an area between the rail lines and the lake, from which there is no land route to escape if a derailment happens on the lines as they cross through the city. The majority of these residents are poor and elderly, and probably likely to become instant victims of such a potential environmental hazard.
All of this is beside the very real fact that this waste will represent millions of pounds of potential "dirty bomb" material travelling through the country on largely unsecured rail lines.
Once this material gets to Nevada, it will be stored far underground at Yucca mountain, where scientists have offered very mixed reviews as to the seismic stability of the site. Remember, folks, this land sits on a tectonic plate boundary, which, while currently inactive, could easily change in short order. The storage facility at Yucca Mountain is 90 miles away from Las Vegas, and while studies have shown that leakage shouldn't affect the groundwater there, the environmental concerns are very real. Downstream from Yucca Mountain is Ash Meadows wildlife sanctuary, a nature preserve with a good deal of endangered species that exist nowhere else on the planet.
I said all that to say this: the 527's have distorted Bush's stance on Yucca mountain by saying he initially opposed it, then signed it into law (he didn't; he said that we should rely on science to tell us whether it was safe first...then he backtracked on that and signed it into law; still a betrayal, mind you, but not one of the magnitude Soros & Company portray). Then, it is stated that Kerry will oppose Yucca Mountain, a message he conveyed in his visit here.
A look at Kerry's record says otherwise; and Edwards is no better. At this point, I will allow the following article to tell the story:
Kerry Flips AGAIN --
Nuclear Waste & Yucca Mountain
Posted August 13, 2004
John Kerry took time in Nevada this week to criticize President Bush's decision to use Yucca Mountain as the national repository for nuclear waste. Kerry said the decision was based on politics, not science. Yet in 1999, Kerry encouraged speeding up the timing of making Yucca Mountain ready to accept nuclear waste.
HUMAN EVENTS has obtained a March 23, 1999, letter [see below] to then-Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Frank Murkowski (R.-Alaska), signed by Kerry, calling for the acceleration of a nuclear waste acceptance schedule.
When the letter was sent to Murkowski, the Committee was working on legislation to advance the siting and construction of Yucca Mountain -- the site designated by Congress in 1987 as the only site the Department of Energy was allowed to study as a future permanent storage repository.
The thrust of the Kerry letter is that there was an established order for shipping waste from various locations across the country, but Kerry wanted nuclear waste from decommissioned power reactors to be allowed to cut in line.
The letter states, "We request that such legislation [the Yucca bill] include an accelerated waste acceptance schedule." Apparently, John Kerry had no problem with Yucca Mountain in 1999 -- his focus was on sending nuclear waste out of Massachusetts to Yucca Mountain as quickly as possible, regardless of the staunch opposition from Nevada, including two of Sen. Kerry's fellow Democratic Senators.
Kerry's Running Mate Supported Yucca Mountain, Too
When President Clinton vetoed the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (the Yucca Bill, S. 1287) in 2000, John Edwards voted to override the veto (the override attempt failed, garnering 64 of 67 votes needed). On May 8, 2000, Inside Energy reported on the vote:
Murkowski said he was pleased that 13 Democrats voted to override the veto. One of those, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., had previously voted against the bill. Asked what accounted for Edwards' change of heart, a spokesman said that since the earlier vote, the senator had "won some very specific commitments" from Carolina Power & Light, one of the utilities with nuclear power plants in North Carolina.
According to the spokesman, CP&L said the passage of the bill and its implementation "would dramatically reduce the need for additional storage space for spent fuel at the Shearon Harris plant in Wake County." The utility, he said, assured Edwards that if the bill were implemented, it would not need to use a fourth spent fuel pool at the plant and that 33 fewer fuel assemblies would need to be stored at the site or transported from other plants in the state. [...]
Nevada Democratic Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid issued a statement Tuesday calling the vote to sustain the president's veto "a huge victory for every Nevadan." "This attempt to override the President's veto," they said, "was nothing more than a futile attempt by the Republican leadership to do an end-run around existing law to help the very influential and high-powered nuclear lobby stack the deck against Nevada."
So, the next time someone wants to tell you Kerry is pro environment, don't believe him. The fact is, he's no better than his opponent.
signing off,
Gideon MacLeish