Craig: Temporary N-Waste Dump In Nevada A Lock Science Backs Site Selection, He Says, But Admits He’d Fight It If From Nevada

Republican Sen. Larry Craig maintained on Monday that the debate over a temporary nuclear waste dump in Nevada has been unduly politicized. But he conceded that if he were a senator from Nevada instead of Idaho he would be aggressively fighting his bill too.

“I would act just like the Nevada senators are acting today,” Craig told local political, civic and business leaders at the City Club of Boise. “We all suffer from that.”

Craig, who is pushing legislation that would locate the temporary dump near Yucca Mountain while a final decision is made on whether Yucca Mountain should be the nation’s permanent dump, agreed that a key reason Nevada was picked for radioactive waste storage 15 years ago was because it had little political clout.

The staunch advocate of states’ rights, who declared “Idaho will not tolerate permanent storage” at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, argued that the scientific evidence supports the Nevada selection despite the political harangue that has overtaken the debate in recent years.

In addition, he said he was now confident that he had the votes needed to override President Clinton’s promised veto of his bill - a claim that Nevada leaders continue to discount.

The bill, which opens the dump not just to commercial waste but also to government waste like that stored in eastern Idaho, cleared the Senate this spring on a 65-34 vote - two short of the number needed to override a veto.

The administration has maintained that construction of a temporary dump would eliminate the pressure needed to come up with a permanent one.

Craig not only predicted that the House would overwhelmingly approve the measure this fall but that he has picked up the needed votes to counteract the veto he claimed Clinton was wielding for “the political correctness of it.”

He said Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Mary Landrieu of Lousiana had advised the White House in late May that they were dissatisfied with the administration’s failure to offer an alternative in the face of its veto threat.

“I believe we have in hand a veto-proof Congress at this point,” Craig said.

The Nevada congressional delegation has conceded that it cannot defeat the Craig legislation, but it is continuing to reinforce its allies to shore up the voting bloc needed to sustain a veto.

Craig, in contending that the nation has the technology to handle and store waste, suggested that Idaho and the United States have made a mistake in not embracing nuclear power as the rest of the world has.

“That’s a tragedy for our state, that’s a tragedy for our nation,” he said, predicting that rather than being on the decline, nuclear power may well be on the verge of a new ascendancy.

“In our search for a clean source of fuel because of our frustration over dams and rivers, because of our frustration over coal as a source of fuel, we will again look at nuclear power,” he told the City Club.

He also said that once the government begins fulfilling its part of the nuclear deal with the state and begins shipping waste out of INEEL, projects that might involve bringing in new waste for a period of time could be considered.

But, he added, “then I think it is an issue you put before the people.”