It's an all-too-rare pleasure to see the nuclear industry sweat,
but in the run-down to the wire, there were clear signs of panic in the
campaign to push through the U.S. senate a plan to ship the nation's
commercial nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain outside Las Vegas.
When Bush came to power, the nuke lobby thought they had it
made. The days of competition between the oil industry and the nuclear lobby
are long gone. Now they all belong to the same conglomerate. Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham, perhaps the only member of the cabinet who
requires a more simplified briefing book than Bush, was an old industry pal,
long since bought and paid for.
Bush himself called for more subsidies to nuclear power and
reversed his election-eve opposition to the nuke industry's most fervent
dream: the Yucca Mountain dump for nuclear waste from around the country,
hauled in by rail. September 11 changed all that. Not immediately, mind you.
But as the patriotic hysteria, in which it was deemed un-American to
question any Bush proposal, began to subside, people began to conclude that
the scheme to truck 77,000 tons of radioactive waste through their
communities wasn't the brightest idea.
Maps of the possible transport routes show that more than 50
million Americans live within one mile of these nuclear corridors. Even the
rosiest scenario painted by the Department of Energy (DOE) concedes deaths
from cancers associated with the passage of these radioactive boxcars.
Naturally, that prediction doesn't take into account the toll that might
result from an act of sabotage or, more likely, a simple train derailment or
jackknifed tractor-trailer truck that sends highly radioactive waste
spilling into rivers, lakes and neighborhoods. The DOE has estimated that
close to 300 crashes could occur in the foreseeable future, once shipments
commence.
So, the nuclear industry had to act fast. It threw $5 million in
PAC money to senators and senatorial candidates. It deployed a legion of K
Street lobbyists, many with ties to both the Bush administration and
big-time Democrats, and high-powered PR firms to clear the way.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce beamed a wave of wildly misleading
radio ads across the country aimed at securing senate passage of the Yucca
Mountain bill. The Chamber's ads were little more than focus group-tested
scare tactics claiming that the Yucca Mountain plan, which enviros have
shrewdly dubbed "Mobile Chernobyl," is actually a "way to get nuclear waste
out of your communities." This is in reference to the nuclear waste now
being stored at commercial reactors. Of course, the waste will continue to
pile up at those sites as long as the plants operate and for years after
they are mothballed. In fact, all nuclear waste must "cool" for at least
five years before they can even consider shipping off somewhere.
Under the Yucca Mountain bailout plan, with an estimated cost of
$58 billion, the lethal waste will go transcontinental, rolling through 44
states, plus the District of Columbia, passing through communities now far
removed from nuclear plants and through states that have decided to reject
nuclear power. The ads also tried to calm the public's nerves by suggesting
that once entombed in Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste will be safely
contained for all time, or at least 10,000 years. As one might expect, the
Chamber delicately sidestepped the question as to whether or not Yucca
Mountain isn't in fact a kind of geological sieve.
The disposal site sits on top of an aquifer that is becoming
more and more important as a source of drinking water for the ever-expanding
Las Vegas metro area. Even the DOE's own geological investigations reveal
that the earthquake-prone nature of the Yucca Mountain site may create
fissures in the earth that will allow the waste to seep into the underground
reservoir.
The July 9 U.S. Senate vote on Yucca Mountain offered a chance
for progressives and environmentalists to strike back at the nuclear power
industry. The omens seemed auspicious with public concern and Senate leader
Tom Daschle's pledge that the Democrats would stop the Yucca Mountain plan.
He was wrong.
In the crunch, Daschle could muster only 36 Democrats against
the Yucca Mountain plan, with Patty Murray of Washington, Dick Durbin of
Illinois, John Edwards of North Carolina, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina
and Pat Leahy of Vermont all siding with the nuclear industry.
Now comes a long battle in the courts, appropriation fights over
the billions the plan will cost and then, almost certainly, civil
disobedience. Perhaps we will live to see the congressional delegation of
Nevada and its governor sitting on the railtracks, being denounced by the
Office of Homeland Security as terrorists.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the
muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander
Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
