As a Republican, Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico is ideologically opposed to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada's top Democrat. Yet Domenici has said Reid is his closest friend in the Senate. Maybe this is why, on the issue of Yucca Mountain, Domenici is pushing two bills - one that would irreparably harm Nevada and incense Reid and one that would greatly serve Nevada and please Reid.
In June Reid and Domenici held a joint press conference to announce a stunning agreement. They said they had been working secretly for a year on a plan that would send high-level nuclear waste to federally operated interim storage sites within states that have nuclear power plants.
Domenici said the plan would take some of the pressure off the Energy Department and allow it to make steady progress on its plan to open a permanent nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Domenici also said the lack of even an interim plan for nuclear waste was holding up construction of new nuclear power plants.
Reid said the plan would spare Nevada from becoming an interim storage site. Also, Reid said, the plan would surely be protested by the affected states, gaining more support for Nevada's position that the waste should remain where it is, safely stored at the nuclear power plants. Additionally, Reid said their interim plan would cover the next 25 years or so, giving Nevada more time to convince the country and the federal government that Yucca Mountain is a scientifically unsound project.
While the two senators each had his own reasons for supporting the interim plan, at least they were in agreement and Nevada seemed protected for a long time.
This week, however, Domenici introduced another bill in the Senate, one that would send all of the country's nuclear waste - whether generated at nuclear weapons plants or nuclear power plants - to a temporary, above-ground storage site at Yucca Mountain. Under the bill, the waste would begin moving to Nevada in 2010.
One point of Domenici's bill is to support the pro-Yucca Mountain argument, transparent as it may be, that nuclear waste stored at power plants is an inviting target for terrorists. So, thousands of trucks carrying the waste cross-country to Nevada for the next 25 years wouldn't be?
With his latest proposal, Domenici is trying to change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, and amendments made in 1987, that protect Nevada from temporary storage while it is being studied as the sole site for permanent storage. Already there have been many changes to the original nuclear waste legislation that have weakened safety standards at Yucca Mountain. How much more must Nevada endure?
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