It's a rare day that you see these guys sweat, but the nuclear
industry is getting frantic. You can tell by the desperate nature of their
recent campaign to push through the U.S. senate the 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 pal, long
bought and sold. Bush himself called for more subsidies to nuclear power and
reversed his election-eve opposition to the nuke industries most fervent
aspiration: the Yucca Mountain dump.
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 recede, 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
admits that at least 48 people will die from cancers associated with the
passage of these radioactive boxcars. Naturally, that figure doesn't take
into account the toll that might result from an act of saboteur, more
likely, a simple train derailment or jackknifed tractor-trailer truck that
sends highly radioactive waste spilling into rivers, lakes and
neighborhoods.
So, the nuclear industry had to act fast. It deployed a legion
of K Street lobbyists, many with ties to both the Bush administration and
big-time Democrats, and some of the nation's most craven PR firms to clear
the way.
The latest recruit to the nuke team is the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, which has beamed a wave of wildly misleading radio ads across the
country aimed at securing senate passage of the Yucca Mountain bill. A vote
is expected in the next week or two.
The Chamber's ads are little more than focus-group tested scare
tactics. The ads claim 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, 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 try to calm the public nerves by suggesting that
once entombed in the bowels of Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste will be
safely contained for all time or at least 10,000 years. Of course, the
Chamber delicately sidesteps 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.
There are signs that the public is beginning to awaken from the
near catatonic state it has slumbered in since the 9/11 attacks. The
collapse of the stock market, the insider trading scandals, the looting of
401K's, mounting layoffs, the gruesome failures of the Bush war machine,
Ashcroft's assault on the Constitution, the lack of an evenhanded plan for
Middle East peace ... the list of troubles grows daily. With the Yucca
Mountain vote approaching any day, there's a chance to strike back and begin
to set things right. All it would take to defeat the nuclear lobby and give
the Bush administration a deserved black eye is for a handful of senators to
launch and sustain a filibuster.
In the past, Democrats have rushed to the nuclear industry's
rescue. An April 28 survey by the Las Vegas Review showed that 11 Democratic
senators supported the project, including such luminaries as John Edwards,
Patty Murray and Ernest Hollings. Others said were undecided, including Paul
Wellstone. Now's the time to see if the likes of Wellstone, the
self-professed saviour of progressive causes, really have the courage and
the skill to monkeywrench the system.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the
muckrakingnewsletter 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.
