Political cover for McCain

Thursday, May 29, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

Campaigning in Keene, N.H., in December, Sen. John McCain was asked how he proposed to dispose of high-level nuclear waste. The question came after he said he would increase the use of nuclear power as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

McCain replied to the question with his stock response. “My preference is that we store it,” he told the local newspaper. “I always thought that Yucca Mountain was the right place to do it.”

Actually, this oft-repeated response of his to questions about nuclear waste is an understatement. McCain, R-Ariz., has been one of the most vocal champions of Yucca Mountain in Congress.

So it was a momentary surprise Tuesday when McCain, delivering a speech on nuclear security at the University of Denver, departed from his standard line on the Nevada mountain, located just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

“I would seek to establish an international repository for spent nuclear fuel that could collect and safely store materials overseas that might otherwise be reprocessed to acquire bomb-grade materials,” McCain said. “It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain.”

This sudden, out-of-nowhere change in his stock comment on deadly nuclear waste was only momentary in its surprise value because its obvious political angle came swiftly into view.

Since at least 2000, when a victory in “purple” Nevada would have meant Al Gore’s winning the presidency, presidential candidates have seen this state as critical. And guess who campaigned in Reno the day after his Denver speech?

McCain’s new “international” view on nuclear waste is a thinly disguised ploy. He can now try to defuse Yucca Mountain as an issue when Nevadans, who have been fighting the project for 25 years, ask him about it.

But Nevadans know better. The idea of transporting toxic nuclear waste across the country to porous Yucca Mountain is preposterous. Transporting it over land and sea is even more so.